
dass_£B ^ 



Book. 



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MODEL MEN 



MODEL WOMEN 



CHILDREN. 



HORACE MAYHEW. 

II 




Sculptured &e % G. %xu. 



LONDON : 
WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, 

WARWICK HOUSE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 



TRffBf 
. Hr /Hi 

'01 



WARD, LOCK, AND TYLERS 

SERIES OF 

TWO SHILLING NOVELS. 



Sunny South. Armstrong. 

Life of a Beauty. Author of *' Flirt." 

My Pretty Cousin. Author of "Flirt.' 

Holiday House. Sinclair. 

Flyers of the Hunt. Mills. 

Stable Secbets. Mills. 

Father Darcey. Marsh. 

Time the Avenger. Marsh. 

Wild Oats. Wraxall. 

Opera Singer's Wifk. Grey. 

Eccentric Personages. W. II. Russell. 

Man of the World. Fullom. 

Sketches in London. Grant. 

Ambition. Smith. 

Lamplighter. Cumminq. 

The Monk. Sherwood. 

Ida May. Langdon. 

The Convent. MeCrindell. 

Rachel Cohen. Kemp. 

Helen Bury. Worboise. 

Mountain Marriagk. Mayne Meid. 

DfCTioNARY of Difficulties. 

Improvisators. ( Andersen. 

Margareti ^A7ckc , 0LE. Colloid. 



London: WARD, LOCK, AND TYLER, 

WARWJPK HOUSE, TATERNOSTER ROW. 






*» -k 



ll'K 




OUR MUSEUM OF MODEL MEN. 



PAGE 

The Model Preface . • . . . v 

„ Husband . . . . . . 1 

„ Bachelor •", •. 4 

Son .8 

„ Policeman 10 

„ Waiter 16 

„ Magistrate . . . .21 

„ Labourer 24 

„ Agitator . . . . . .27 

Tailor 31 

M.P 36 

„ Debtor 39 



IV OUR MUSEUM OF MODEL ME* 


r. 

PAGE 


The Model Friend .... 


. 44 


„ Fast Man 






. 46 


„ Clerks 






. 52 


„ Gentleman 






. 60 


„ Irish Speaker . 






. 64 


„ Banker . 






. 68 


„ Sponge . 






. . 70 


„ Lodger . 






• . 73 


„ Beadle 






. . 75 


„ Omnibus Conductor 






. 83 


Small Group of Models . . 






. 86 


il 















MODEL PHEFACY - 

(L1TEKALLY NOTHING IN IT.) 

LL will agree with me that the 
less an author says about him- 
self the better, especially when 
he has nothing to say. 
The quicker he says it, too, the better. 
The only difficulty is where to begin. How 
would you possibly begin upon nothing ? 
Nothing easier — write a book. 
But if it has no beginning, it can have no end. 
Precisely so — its end will be Nothing. 
Thank you, Eeader, for Nothing. 
But it will never do for you to take me 
up, or my book either, in this disposition. It 



VI THE MODEL PREFACE. 

is too like a policeman. Can't you be good- 
tempered 1 

A book, to meet with its proper desert, should 
be gone through like a bag of filberts. You should 
sit down to its contents in full anticipation of 
finding something good in them. You throw 
away the bad ones, of course, and crack only 
the good ones; these you enjoy with all the 
greater relish after the bad specimens, and you 
do not condemn the whole lot because there 
happen to be one or two among them not quite 
so sound as the rest. 

Now I want you, Reader, to pick my Models 
in a similar spirit. If you come to a bad one, cast 
it aside, and try another. If you find nothing in 
that one, then select another from a richer plate, 
till you find something at last to your taste. Do 
this kindly, in a chatty, convivial manner, as if 
you had made up your mind to enjoy yourself, find- 
ing fault reluctantly, and then, even, generously, 
and allowing the good fruit to outweigh in your 
judgment the bad. Do this, I say, with perfect 
good humour, and, my word for it, you are qualified 
to sit at every literary board, gracing the richest as 



THE MODEL PKEFACE. 



Vll 



well as the poorest table of contents, with your 
presence as 




THE MODEL READER. 



Purchase also the book you read, and your 
title is complete. 

Something, you see, has come out of nothing. 

I have even something more to say. 

Many of the enclosed "Models" are taken 
from Punch, that Model Publication — surely you 
will allow me to say that, since, in writing, it has 
been my Book of Models. The specimens have 
been all modelled from living persons. I could point 
to many of my friends who have unconsciously sat 
as the originals, whilst I was quietly plastering 
them on paper. If any one of them is dissatisfied 



Vlll THE MODEL PREFACE. 

with his portrait, I shall be too happy to put his 
name under it in the next batch. 

In the meantime there is one Model which I 
am sure will go home to the bosom of every one 
w 7 ho reads it, for the likeness is so self-evident that 
no one can fail, at the very first glance, to trace 
the happy identity. For this reason alone, my 
little book must be in the pockets of thousands, 
for who does not like to feel that he has that 
within him which brings him as near as possible 
to the Model Gentleman? 

This belief, once generally inculated, would be 
half its accomplishment. 

And now, Model Header, if this noble end 
were only half attained, I ask you most emphati- 
cally if you would call that nothing 1 

This is certainly a Model Preface, short, 
modest, and all about nothing. 





«i/MVi 




1TIHE" MODEL HUSBAND. 



MODEL MEN. 




THE MODEL. HUSBAND. 



JN" a week day, he walks out with 
his wife, and is not afraid 
of a milliner's shop. He 
even has " change" when 
asked for it, and never al- 
ludes to it afterwards. He is 
not above carrying a large 
brown paper parcel, or a 
cotton umbrella, or the 
clogs, or even holding the 
baby in his lap in an omni- 
bus. He runs on first, to 
knock at the door, when it is raining. He goes out- 
side, if the cab is full. He goes to bed first in cold 
weather. He will get up in the middle of the night 
to rock the cradle, or answer the door-bell. He allows 



~ 



t 2 THE MODEL HUSBAND. 

the mother-in-law to stop in the house. He takes 
wine with her, and lets her breakfast in her own room. 
He eats cold meat without a murmur or pickles, and 
is indifferent about pies and puddings. The cheese is 
never too strong, or the beer too small, or the tea too 
weak for him. He believes in hysterics, and is melted 
instantly with a tear. He patches up a quarrel with 
a velvet gown, and drives away the sulks with a trip 
to Epsom, or a gig in the Park on a Sunday. He 
goes to church, regularly, and takes his wife to the 
Opera once a-year. He pays for her losses at cards, 
and gives her all his winnings. He never flies out 
about his buttons, or brings home friends to supper. 
His clothes never smell of tobacco. He respects the 
curtains, and never smokes in the house. He carves, 
but never secretes for himself "the brown.'* He 
laces his wife's stays, even in December, and never 
asks for a fire in the bed-room on the most wintry 
nights. He respects the fiction of his wife's age, and 
would as soon burn his fingers as touch the bright 
poker. He never invades the kitchen, and would no 
more think of blowing up any of the servants than of 
ordering the dinner, or having the tray brought up 
after eleven. He is innocent of a latch-key. 

He lets the family go out of town once overy year, 
whilst he remains at home with one knife and fork, 
sits on a brown holland chair, sleeps on a curtainless 
bed, and has a charwoman to wait on him. He goes 
down on the Saturday, and comes up on the Monday, 
taking with him the clean linen, and bringing back 
the dirty clothes. Ho checks the washfrig-bills. He 



THE MODEL HUSBAND. 6 

pays the housekeeping money without a suspicion, 
and shuts his eyes to the " Sundries." He is very easy 
and affectionate, keeping the wedding anniversary 
punctually ; never complaining if the dinner is not 
ready; making the breakfast himself if no one is 
down; letting his wife waltz, and drink porter be- 
fore company. He runs all her errands, pays all 
her bills, and cries like a child at her death. 




THE MODEL BACHELOR. 




TTE lives in chambers. He is waited upon by an old 
■"• laundress, who lives he scarcely knows where. He 
sees her once a- week to pay her wages: but hears her 
every morning putting his room to rights. He rises 
late. He is skilful in lighting a fire — his practice 
generally of a morning. He understands the principle 
of boiling a kettle, and can cook a chop and trim 
a lamp. He bears all misfortunes with equanimity, 
and goes out without an oath to take his breakfast 
at a coffee-shop, if he is " out of tea." He is not 
astonished if he finds no loose silver in his trowsers, 
after they have been brushed. He has lost the keys 
of his drawers. His tea-caddy is, also, open from 
morn inn* to night, the lock being, like his means, 
dreadfully hampered. He is uncertain about the 



THE MODEL BACHELOK 5 

number of his shirts. He has not seen a button for 
years. He cannot tell who drinks the grog, or what 
becomes of all the empty bottles. He wonders who 
lias taken all his Waveiiey Novels, excepting the second 
volume of the Pirate. He is allowed only one pair 
of boots per diem. If he wants a clean pair he must 
clean them himself, or wait till the following morning. 
His washerwoman mends his linen — at least she 
charges for it. He takes everything good-humouredly, 
but is a little put out if he finds he has left his latch 
key in his other coat, and that he cannot get in. He 
is a little ruffled, also, when he discovers the laundress 
has not made Ms bed — on Christmas-day, for instance 
He plays only two instruments — the flute and the 
cornet- a-piston. Heis much sought after in society, 
and is a great diner-out. He can tie his handkerchief 
in a hundred different ways, and cuts an orange into 
the most impossible patterns. He is a good hand at 
carving, and rarely sends a goose into the opposite 
lady's lap. He makes excellent rabbits on the wall 
to amuse the children, and allows them to climb up 
his knees, reckless of his trowsers, and hang on his 
neck without a groan. He shines most at a supper 
party. He brews a bowl of punch, and mixes a lobster 
salad better than any man — so he says at least. He 
sings a good song with a noisy chorus, and makes a 
speech without being " unaccustomed to public speak- 
ing." He runs through a person's Health neater than 
anybody else, and serves up a Toast in the most 
glowing style, but does not stuff a society with nothing 
else all the evening. He is amiable to the fair sex, 



6 THE MODEL BACHELOR. 

and bands cups of tea and glasses of negus, without 
spilling them. He is in great demand as a godfather 
and keeps a silver mug on hand, ready for the occa 
sion. He enjoys his comforts, hut doesn't dine at 
home, for he has no cook. He studies his ease, hut 
jumps up readily on a cold morning to answer the 
door, if the knock is repeated more than three times. 
He knows where the best dinners are to he had about 
town, and is intimate with the shops for the best meat, 
the best fish, the best game, the best cigars, the best 
everything. He walks up the stairs of his Chambers 
in the dark, without falling, or trying at the wrong 
door. He prides himself on knowing a good glass of 
port. He is a favourite stalking-horse of the husbands, 
who are never out late but they are sure to have been 
with him. Every "glass too much" is put down to 
him ; every visit to the Docks ; all the half-prices at 
the theatre; all the dinners and suppers, no mattei 
where, are at his persuasion. The wives consequently 
bear him no great affection, and generally convey their 
opinion by coupling his name with the prefix " That" 
very strongly italicised. His good-humour, however, 
conquers them, 'and he is welcome at every family 
table. He sees everything, is seen everywhere, and 
scarcely cares anything for anybody — excepting him- 
self. His great object of life is enjoyment, and he 
succeeds to his heart's content. 

Suddenly he is missed. He is not seen for weeks. 
IIo is entombed alive in his dreary Chambers with the 
gout, and only his laundress to tend him at distant 
intervals. The long days, the never-ending nights, 



THE MODEL BACHELOR. 7 

the racking pain, the cross old woman, who makes a 
favour of everything and is grateful for nothing, 
the want of comforts, the utter homelessness of the 
place, strike a chill into his heart, and he would wil 
lingly give all his past enjoyments for one kind voice 
to cheer him, for one person whom he loved to he near 
him. He rises from his hed an altered man. 

He finds out a young niece whom he has never 
seen. He buys a house and gives it to her, to allow 
him to live in it. She nurses him in all his sick- 
nesses, and bears all his ill-humour. He leaves her 
his little property, is as kind to her as the gout will 
allow him to be, and is lamented at his death by one 
person at least. 

Thus lives and dies the Model Bachelob. 







THE MODEL SO\ 




^E dresses in black, with a 
white neckcloth. He nevei 
goes to the theatre. He is 
not fond of cards, though he 
takes a hand occasionally at 
whist to please his old father; 
but then it is only for penny 
points. He has no talent 
for running in debt, or any 
genius for smoking. He does 
not flirt, or read light publi 
cations, or have noisy friends 
to call upon him. He pays 
ready money for everything, 
and insists upon discount. 
He has a small sum in a 
particular safe Bank, some 
where. He dances but sel- 
dom, and then only with young ladies with a very 
certain income. He does not care much for beauty, 
and has a soul above pins and rings. He never keeps 
the servants up, and has a horror of reading in bed. 
lie decants the wines, and compliments his father 
adroitly upon his " tawny old port." He carves with- 
out spilling any of the gravy at table, and is very 



THE MODEL SON 



9 



obliging in executing all paternal errands and com- 
missions. There is rarely more than one Model Son 
in each family ; but he does duty enough for half-a 
dozen, as he is continually being held up as the very 
model of perfection to the other sons, who bear him 
no very violent love in consequence. His virtue has 
its reward in his father's will 




THE MODEL POLICEMAN. 




E walks upright, as flexible 
as a kitchen poker, 
his thoughts and 
hands quite full — 
like the King of 
Prussia — of his " be- 
loved Berlins." He 
keepshis eyes straight 
before him, even if 
there 13 a leg of 
mutton from the 
baker's running the 
' opposite way. He 
rarely looks lower 
jfff^x^ir 7 ! than th e p arlour win 

^S/y^S^T*** dows, when the ser- 

vants are on board wages. His heart — unlike 
himself — is constantly " on the beat." His taste for 
beauty is only equalled by his appetite for cold beef. 
He shows the weakness of his body by calling Daniel 
Harvey " Wittles." 

The Model Policeman moves only in the most 
fashionable areas. He is rather particular in seeing 
if the coal cellar is fast, about supper time He is 



THE MODEL POLICEMAN 11 

never inside a kitchen, unless " the street-door has 
heen left open." He is affable to the footman, and 
smiles to the page, hut suspects the butler, and calls 
the French maid "proud." His appearance and 
spirits are greatly regulated by the neighbourhood 
In Belgravia he wears straps, plays with a pink, and 
buzzes to himself some popular tune. In St. Giles's 
his cheeks get hollow, his buttons grow rusty, his belt 
is put on anyhow, and his boots are only polished 
with blacklead ! ! 

The Model Policeman arrives at a row before it 
is quite over, and sometimes gets at a fire a minute or 
Vo before the fire-escape. He knows every pick 
pocket in the world, and has seen everybody who is 
taken up two or three times before. He has a vivid 
recollection of what another Policeman remembers, 
and if the testimony of an Inspector is impugned, he 
shows a great love for his cloth by swearing (as the 
saying is) " till all is blue." He objects to " plain 
clothes;" he thinks them not uniform, and "unper 
fessional." He never smiles when inside a theatre, 
nor sleeps at a sermon, nor takes an opera-glass to 
look at the ballet when stationed in the gallery of Her 
Majesty's. He rarely releases the wrong person he 
has taken into custody for disturbing the performances 
He has a virtuous horror of Punch and Judy, and 
insists upon the India rubber Brothers " moving on" 
in the midst even of the Human Pyramid. He never 
stops at a print-shop, nor loiters before a cook-shop, 
nor hangs about a pastrycook's, excepting to drive 
away the little boy's who choke up the door where the 



12 THE MODEL POLICEMAN. 

stale pastry is exhibited. He is not proud, but will 
hold a gentleman's horse at an emergency, and take 
sixpence for it. He rings bells the first thing in the 
morning, runs to fetch the doctor, helps an early coffee- 
stall to unpack her cups and saucers, pulls down shut- 
ters, gives " lights" to young gentlemen staggering 
home, directs them to the nearest " public," and does 
not even mind going in with them, "just to have a 
little drop of something to keep himself warm." In 
fact, the Model Policeman does anything for the 
smallest trifle, to make himself useful as well as 
ornamental. He never laughs. He is the terror of 
the publicans on Saturday nights, but is easily melted 
with " a drop on the sly." 

He is courageous, also, and will take up an apple 
woman, or a " lone woman" with babies, without a 
moment's hesitation. He is not irritable, but knows 
his dignity. Do not speak to him much, unless. you 
have a very good coat. Above all, do not joke with 
him when on duty. You are sure to know him by his 
collar being up. In that mood, he strikes first and 
listens afterwards. Do not put a finger upon him, for 
he construes it into an assault. Of the two forces he 
certainly belongs to the Physical, rather than to the 
Moral Force. He will help an old woman over a 
crossing: but is not very "nice" when roused, and 
thinks no more of breaking a head than an oath, if it 
stands in the way of his advancement. He is tremend 
ous in a row, and cares no more for a " brush" than 
his oilskin hat. He hates the name of Chartist, and 
cannot " abide" a Frenchman in any shape, any more 



THE MODEL POLICEMAN 13 

than a beggar, especially if he has moustaches He 
has a secret contempt for the " Specials," whom he 
calls " amateurs." He rarely fraternises with a Beadle, 
excepting when there is an insurrection of boys, and 
it comes to open snowballing, or splashing with the 
fire-plug. He prohibits all sliding, puts down vault- 
ing over posts, leapfrog, grottos, chuck-farthing, and is 
terribly upset with a piece of orange-peel, or the cry 
of " Peeler " 

The rain does not terrify him, but still, to protect 
his clothes, he prefers standing under a spacious por- 
tico, or taking refuge in some friendly hall, where he is 
the centre of a group of listening flunkies who are 
waiting on their " missuses " waltzing ahove. Late at 
night, if there is a public-house open in the neigh- 
bourhood, you may be sure of finding him there, for 
England expects every Policeman to do his Duty 
where there is the greatest danger coupled with the 
most liquor. 

He is kind, also, to old gentleman " who have 
been dining out." He learns their address, takes 
them to the door, sees them in, and calls the next day 
to inquire " if they got home safe !" A small gratuity 
does not offend him, especially if accompanied with 
the offer as to what he would like to drink ? 

He avoids a lobster-shop for fear of vulgar com- 
parisons, and hates the military — " the whole biling 
of 'm" — for some raw reason; but he touches his hat 
to " the Duke." He rarely sleeps inside a cab of a 
cold night. He never lights a cigar till the theatres 
are over. He is a long time in hearing the cry of 



14 THE MODEL POLICEMAN 

"Stop thief!" and is particularly averse to running; 
his greatest pace is a hackney-coach gallop, even after 
a Sweep, who is following, too literally, his calling. 
He is nieek to lost children, and takes them to the 
station-house in the most fatherly manner. He is 
polite to elderly ladies, who have lost a cat or a parrot, 
and gives directions to a porter in search of a par- 
ticular street without losing his temper. He is fond 
of a silver watch, and he reaches the summit of a 
policeman's pride and happiness if he gets a silver 
guard with it. 

There is nothing, however, he loves half so closely 
— next to himself — as his whiskers. It is only a good 
trimming from the Bench, or a ducking in one of 
the Trafalgar Square basins, that can possibly take the 
curl out of them. He would sooner throw up staff, 
station, and be numbered amongst the dead letters of 
the Post Office, or the rural police, than part with a 
single hair of them; for the Model Policeman feels 
that without Iris whiskers he should cut but a con- 
temptible figure in the eyes of those he loves, even 
though he exhibited on his collar the proud label of 
A 1 ! Beyond his whiskers, his enjoyments are but few. 
He watches the beer as it is delivered at each door, he 
follows the silvery sound of " muffins !" through streets 
and squares, he loves to speculate upon the destina 
tion of the fleeting butcher's tray, and on Saturday 
night he threads the mazy stalls of the nearest market, 
his love growing at the sight of the tilings it is wont 
to feed on. His principal amusement is to peep 
through the key-hole of the street-door at night with 



THE MODEL POLICEMAN. 



J5 



his bull's eye — especially if any one is looking at him 
This is the great difficulty, however, for the police- 
man's clothes are of that deep " Invisible Blue" that 
persons have lived for years in London without seeing 
one. This is the reason, probably, when he is seen, 
that he throws so much light upon himself, as if the 
creature wished ,to engrave the fact of his curiosity 
strongly upon the recollection of the startled beholder 
by means of the most powerful illumination. Without 
some such proof, the incredulous world would never 
believe in the existence of a Model Policeman ! 




THE MODEL WATTE*, 



is single, of eou v pe 
What time has he to 
make love, excepting 
to the cook, and she 
is hot-tempered and 
cross, as all taveni 
cooks are, and he has 
far too many spoons to 
look after to think of 
increasing his respon 
sibilities with a family 
of children. 

He is always " Com 
ing ! coming ! " hut 
rather, like the auc 
tioneer, he is always 
"Going! going ! gone !" 
for he no sooner jerks 
out " Coming !" than 
he bolts out of the 
room. Ask him for his name : It is " Bob," or 
" Charmes." The waiter never has a surname. 
He takes his dinner how he can off the sideboard, or 
a chair in the passage. If he is very busy, he has no 
dinner at aiT He approaches his plate to steal a 
mouthful, when fifty shouts of "waitar" catt him 





THIS E0NTRA1T OF JOHN,MANY YEARS WAITER AT 
THE GRAPES TAVERN IS PRESENTED BY THE FREGUENTERS 
OFTHE COFFEE-ROOM TO THE RESPECTED LANDLORD. 



THE M@DEL W All TIE®. ^ w 



THE MODEL WAITER M 

away. Of many contending cries he attends to that 
of " money" first. 

The Model Waiter never says 1. He is quite edito- 
rial, and always says We — as, " We're very full at pre- 
sent, sir. We had two hundred dinners yesterday, sir, 
and three hundred and thirty-five suppers. We consume 
one hundred and sixty-nine rabbits regularly every 
night, sir." He puts on two " Sirs" to every answer, and 
an odd penny, if the score comes to an exact shilling — 
"Chop? yes, sir — sixpence; potatoes? yes, sir — tup- 
pence ; beer ? exactly, sir — tuppence ; and bread ? yes, 
sir ; makes tenpence, and tuppence makes thirteenpence 
— precisely one and a penny, sir." His favourite word 
is " nice." He recommends " a nice chop,, with a nice 
glass of half-and-half;" or he says, " You 11 find that 
a nice glass of port, sir," or it's " the nicest breast he 
ever saw." He can unravel the mysteries of Bradshaiv, 
without turning over every one of the tables two or three 
times, and he knows all the play-bills of the evening 
by heart. He never calls a slice of Stilton " a cheese." 

He is impartial in the distribution of the " paper," 
and gives the middle sheet invariably to him who has 
eaten the most dinners in the house. He shows no 
favour either with the evening papers, but awards them 
first to those who are chinking wine, to the spirits next, 
whilst to the beer he gives the Supplement of yester- 
day's Times. 

His shoes are perfect fellows, with upright heels, 
and the strings are carefully tied ; and his handker 
chief so white, it would do credit to a pet parson 
in the heart of Belgravia, He has "everything in 



J 8 THE MODEL WAITER. 

the house, ' till you cross-examine him, when the 
" everything" sinks down to " a nice chop, or a tender 
steak, sir." The joint is always in " very good cut," 
and has only heen up these two minutes. - He is mute 
for a penny, says " thank yee" for twbpence, and helps 
on your, coat for everything ahove it. Politics have no 
charm for him, and he never looks at a paper, excepting 
when he is waiting for the last customer, and is tired 
of killing flies. The only news that interest him are 
the " Want Places," and the pictures. He is good- 
humoured, and laughs at any joke, even those of a 
Fast Man. A stranger in his vocabulary is a " party. ' ' 
lie talks of persons according to the boxes they sit 
in, and cuts down all gentlemen to " gents. 7 7 He is 
not mean wifti his mustard, or the vinegar-cruets, and 
does not hide them in a dark corner. He carries a 
lofty pillar, quite a falling tower, of plates, without 
dropping anything out of them, and does not spill the 
gravy down an old gentleman's neck. If anything is 
done to rags, or to a cinder, or under-done, or not 
done at all — if the punch is as weak as water, or 
there 's too much sugar in it, or it 's as sour as a pew- 
opener, he bears it all with unruffled meekness, and 
only begins wiping down the table with his napkin. 
If the wine is too old, or too young, or too fruity, or 
too tawny, his waiter's fine instinct tells him at once 
what a gentleman will like, and he rushes out furiously 
in a waiter's gallop to get it, and returns with some 
bing that elicits " Ah ! that 's just the thing. ' ' How- 
3ver, as a general rule, the port has never been less 
than ten years in bottle. The cigars, too, are imported 



THE MODEL WAITER 19 

direct from the Havannah, and cost us full 32*. a 
pound, sir. We do not clear a farthing by them, sir. 

The Model Waiter very seldom has a holiday. 
[f he does, it is to see some other waiter, or to help at 
the Freemason's, or to assist a friend at some grand 
dinner in a nobleman's family. His life vibrates 
between the kitchen and the parlour, and he never 
sits down from morning till long past midnight. He 
attempts to doze sometimes, but the loud chorus of 
"We won't go home till morning !" wakes him up, 
and he execrates in his heart the monster who ever 
composed that song ; it must have been some wretch, 
he is suie, who owed a long score to an unfortunate 
waiter, who had sued him for it. He makes a faint 
effort to turn off the gas, but is repulsed with an unani 
mous call for "more kidneys." It is not wonderful, 
therefore, if in the morning he yawns over the knives 
and forks, and drops several involuntary tears whilst 
replenishing the mustard-pot. 

After wearing out innumerable pairs of shoes, a 
testimonial is got up for the Model Waiter by the 
" gents of his room," and they present him with a 
full-length portrait of himself, " as a slight token of 
their warm appreciation of his unfailing civility, cheer 
ful demeanour, and uniform attention during a term 
of forty years." This testimonial represents him in ■ 
the act of drawing the cork of one of the ten years' 
bottles of port for a party of gentlemen who are sitting 
in a box in the corner of the picture, and who are 
portraits of Messrs. Brown, Robinson, and Smith, 
three of the oldest chop-eaters of the house ! It is 
o 



20 THE MODEL WAITER 

hung in a glittering frame over the mantel-piece of the 
room, in and out of which he has heen running for 
the last forty years, and becomes the property of the 
establishment, there being a special clause let in the 
frame, that it is never to be removed from the room 
The Model Waiter, however, has been saving a little 
fortune of pennies during his long career of chops 
and steaks — his only extravagances having been the 
washing of his white handkerchiefs and Berlin gloves 
every now and then on state occasions — and he pur 
chases, in his grey old age, the business of his land- 
lord, takes unto himself the pretty barmaid as his 
wife, and dies without having once been fined for 
keeping open half a minute after twelve on a Saturday 
night, or serving a pint of beer on Sundays during 
the hours of divine service. His portrait still hangs 
over the mantel-piece as a moral public-house sign to 
all future waiters, that, to become landlords, they have 
only to keep in view the Model Waiter 




THE MODEL MAGISTRATE. 




TTE is a barrister with a subdued practice, and but 
•" little known beyond the usher of his Court. He 
learns, however, that the scales of Justice have two 
sides — one for the rich, one for the poor. The balance, 
as he holds it, is rarely equal. For the one there is a 
fine, " which is immediately paid ;" for the other there 
is the House of Correction, with hard labour. The 
gentleman is invited to a seat on the bench; the 
pauper is kindly informed that " he had better mind 
what he is about" He kn^wa t^c intrinsic value of 



22 THE MODEL MAGISTRATE 

every assault, and has fixed a market price for every 
limb. An eye costs very little more than a case of 
drunkenness. A broken head he puts down at a 
couple of sovereigns, or a donation to the poor-box. 
He is sorry to see young gentlemen, " who have been 
dining out," forget themselves so, and will only fine 
them five shillings this once. He is sure he has seen 
every applewoman before. He will have no trading 
on the kerbstones. He has great faith in the words 
of the police, and calls them by their real names. He 
has a just hatred of a cabman, only to be equalled by 
his profound aversion for an omnibus-conductor. He 
sees a poacher in every smock-frock. 

All beggars he sentences to the Mill. He addresses 
a pickpocket as " Sir," and is sarcastic upon boys, 
calling them "young gentlemen." He delights in 
summoning overseers, and beadles, and enjoys a good 
collision with the workhouse. He regrets exceedingly 
to commit a nobleman. He has a private room for a 
lady shoplifter, and is glad to inform her that she 
"leaves this Court with her character quite unim 
pugned," though the matter has been compromised 
within his hearing. He has the most sublime contempt 
for the opinions of the press. He does not care what 
they say of him, though he does inveigh sometimes 
rather strongly against them. He does not like his law 
to be questioned, but of the two evils prefers a lawyer 
to a hamster. He jokes sometimes, and it must be 
confessed the joke is of the very smallest quality, but the 
whole Court, excepting the poor devil at whose expense 
the lugubrious witticism is cut, laughs tremendously. 



THE MODEL MAGISTRATE. £& 

The Model Magistrate arrives at the Police Office 
at ten, but does not mind keeping the Court waiting. 
He leaves as soon as he can, though he is not very 
partial to visits at his own residence. But what 
he likes least are remonstrances from the Home 
Office, for, strangely enough, a Magistrate has been 
dismissed before now. This may have some little 
influence in keeping the race of Model Magistrates 
rather restricted. May it soon become extinct ! It is 
most pitiful to hear of a Magistrate committing him- 
self as well as the prisoner ! 





"'Ji!>S AWA.T THE PRISONER, A.ND BRING IN THE DINNER." 



THE MODEL LABOUEEB 




E supports a large iamJ} 
upon the smallest 
wages. He works from 
twelve to fourteen 
hours a-day. He rises 
early to dig in what 
he calls his garden. He 
prefers his fireside to 
the alehouse, and has 
only one pipe when he 
gets home, and then 
to hed. He attends 
church regularly, with 
a clean smock-frock and face on Sundays, and 
waits outside, when service is over, to pull his hair 
to his landlord, or, in his absence, pays the same 
reverence to the steward. Beer and he are perfect 
strangers, rarely meeting, except at Christmas or 
harvest time; and as for spirits, he only knov 
them, like meat, by name He does not care foi 
skittles. He never loses a day's work by attending 
political meetings. Newspapers do not make him 
discontented, for the simple reason that he cannot 
read. He believes strongly in the fact of his belonging 
'to the " Finest Peasantry. ' He sends his children 




THE M®PIL L&B@WRII&o 



THE MODEL LABOURER 25 

to school somehow, and gives them the best boots 
and education he can. He attributes all blights, bad 
seasons, failures, losses, accidents, to the repeal of the 
Corn Laws. He won't look at a hare, ar.d imagines, 
in his respect for rabbits, that Jack Sheppard was a 
poacher; and betwixt ourselves, thinks Messrs. Cobde& 
ar.d Bright very little better He whitewashes his cot 
tage once a-year. He is punctual with his rent, and 
somehow, by some rare secret best known by his wages, 
he is never ill He knows absolutely nothing beyond 
the affairs of his parish, and does not trouble himself 
greatly about them. If he has a vote, it is his land 
lord's, of course. He joins in the cry of " Protection," 
wondering what it means, and puts his X most inno 
cently to any farmer's petition He subscribes a 
penny a-week to a Burial Society. He erects triumphal 
arches, fills up a group of happy tenants, shouts, 
sings, dances — any mockery or absurdity, to please 
his measter. He has an incurable horror of the 
Union, and his greatest pride is to starve sooner than 
to solicit parish relief. His children are taught the 
same creed. He prefers living with his wife to being 
separated from her. His only amusement is the Annual 
Agricultural Fat-and-Tallow Show ; his greatest hap 
piness, if his master's pig, which he has fattened, gets 
the prize. He struggles on, existing rather than living, 
infinitely n arse fed than the beasts he gets up for the 
Exhibitions — much less cared about than the soil he 
cultivates, toiling, without hope, spring, summer, 
autumn, and winter, his wages never higher — fre 
quentJy less — and perhaps after thirty years' unceasing 



26 



THE MODEL LABOURER 



labour, if he has been all that time with the same 
landlord, he gets the munificent reward of six-and- 
two-pence, accompanied, it is true, with a warm eulo- 
gium on his virtues by the president (a real Lord), for 
having brought up ten children and several pigs upon 
five shillings a-week. This is the Model Labourer, 
whose end of life is honourably fulfilled if he is able, 
after a whole life's sowing for another, to reap a coffin 
for himself to be buried in ! 




THE MODEL AGITATOE 




HE is born with the bump of Notoriety This bump 
first expands at school. He heads all the rows 
His special delight is in teasing the masters. As for 
punishments, they only whip him on to renewed rows. 
He is insensible to the cane, quite callous to the birch. 
At home the bump grows larger. He bullies the 
servants, and plays the democrat to his younger 
brothers. He is always in open rebellion with " the 
governor," and very seditious on the question of latch 



28 THE MODEL AGITATOR 

keys. His love of talk bursts out on every little 
occasion. He will not ring the bell without an argu- 
ment. He xS Tery rich in contradictions, having 
always a No for everybody else's Yes. At last he 
revolts against parental tyranny, and is kicked out of 
doors. He is an injured man, and joins a debating 
club. The bump gets bigger. He attends a public 
meeting. The bump enlarges still more. He is called 
at the bar, and the bump has reached its culminating 
height. Henceforth He and Notoriety are two insepara- 
bles. He runs after it everywhere, and eventually, 
after numerous dodges through bye-lanes, and heaps 
of mud, and narrow, dirty courses, and the most 
questionable paths, he catches the dear object of his 
pursuit. He is notorious ! He has good lungs, and 
his reputation is made. He is a hearty hater of 
every Government. In fact he is always hating. He 
knows there is very little notoriety to be gained by 
praising. 

The only thing he flatters is the mob. Nothing is 
too sweet for them ; every word is a lump of sugar. 
He flatters their faults, feeds their prejudices with the 
coarsest stimulants, and paints, for their amusement, 
the blackest things white. He is madly cheered in 
consequence. In time he grows into an idol. But 
cheers do not pay, however loud. The most prolonged 
applause will not buy a mutton-chop. The hat is 
earned round, the pennies rain into it, and the Agita 
tor pours them into his patriotic pocket. It is sud- 
denly discovered that he has made some tremendous 
sacrifice for the people. The public sympathy is 



THE MODEL AGITATOR. 29 

first raised, then a testimonial, then a subscription. 
He is grateful, and promises the Millennium. The 
trade begins to answer, and he fairly opens shop as a 
Licensed Agitator. He hires several journeymen with 
good lungs, and sends agents — patriotic bagmen — 
round the country to sell his praises and insults, the 
former for himself, and the latter for everybody else. 
Every paper that speaks the truth of him is purely 
hooted at ; everybody who opposes him is pelted with 
the hardest words selected from the Slang Dictionary 
A good grievance is started, and hunted everywhere. 
People join in the cry, the Agitator leading off and 
shouting the loudest. The grievance is run off its 
legs ; but another and another soon follows, till there 
is a regular pack of them. The country is in a con 
tinual ferment, and at last rises. Eiots ensue ; but 
the Model Agitator is the last person to suffer from 
them. He excites the people to arm themselves for 
the worst ; but begs they will use no weapons His 
talk is incendiary, his advice the very best gnn 
powder, and yet he hopes no explosion will take 
place. He is an Arsenal wishing to pass for a Baby 
linen warehouse. He is all peace, all love, and yet 
his hearers grow furious as they listen to him, and 
rush out to burn ricks and shoot landlords. He is 
always putting his head on the block. Properly 
speaking, he is beheaded once a quarter. 

A Monster Meeting is his great joy, to be damped, 
only, by the rain or the police. He glories in a 
prosecution. He likes to be prosecuted. He asks for 
it: shrieks out to the Government — " Why don't you 



30 THE MODEL AGITATOR. 

prosecute me ?" and cries, and gets quite mad if they 
will not do it. The favour at length is granted. He 
is thrown into prison, and grows fat upon it; for from 
that moment he is a martyr, and paid as one, 
accordingly. 

The Model Agitator accumulates a handsome 
fortune, which he bequeathes to his sons, with the 
following advice, which is a rich legacy of itself : — "If 
you wish to succeed as an Agitator, you must buy 
your patriotism in the cheapest market and sell it in the 
dearest." 




THE MODEL TAILOR 



y 



i E is the most confiding of 

*\ human beings. He is 
generous — charitable to a 
fault — for the destitute 
->- -^ have only to go to him 
C0 7"q and ask for clothes, and 
they get exactly what they 
want. He gives them the 
best of every thing— velvets, 
silks, the finest kersey 
meres— nothing is too good 
for them. He even feels 
a virtuous pleasure in the 
act, and is quite angry if 
the person whom he has 
clothea does not return to 
him afterwards, and be 
measured for a new suit. Far from repulsing you, 
he makes you welcome, and really feels grateful that 
you have not forgotten liim. He presses you in 
the most tempting manner to have something new 
He has a lovely pattern for a waistcoat— a real 
Cashmere— it is just the tb*ng for you. Will you 
allow him to send you home one ? He is miserable 
if you refuse, so take the waistcoat by all means, and 
D 




32 THE MODEL TAILOR 

make the poor fellow happy. He has, also, some 
beautiful stuff for trowsers — just arrived from Paris — 
it would become you admirably — will you let him 
make you a pair? Don't say No, or else his generous 
heart will sink, and with it his high opinion of you. 
His philanthropy, in fact, is unbounded; he does 
good merely for the sake of doing good. All men are 
his brothers, with this exception, that he gives them 
all they ask, even lends them money if they want it, 
and never expects the smallest return. He is the 
Gentleman's Best Friend. 

The Model Tailor, sometimes, it must be con 
fessed, sends in his bill, though payment, gen ei ally 
speaking, never enters into his thoughts. But then 
he is ashamed of the liberty, and apologises most 
profusely for it. He is fully sensible that he is doing 
wrong, and blushes in his soul for the shabbiness he 
is guilty of. It is only that he is terribly distressed 
for money, or else he would not think of " troubling " 
you. He is greatly subject to that heaviest of all 
social calamities— a "little bill." He asks you, as 
the greatest favour, to let him have a "trifle upon 
account," and leaves you happier than poets can 
express, if you promise to let him have something 
in a day or two. Should it be inconvenient, however, 
he never presses the point, and will look in some 
other time. Should you express astonishment at his 
demand — you cannot have had his bill more than 
two years — he excuses himself in the most penitential 
manner, and begs your pardon for having mentioned 
the subject. The next day he calls to inquire if you 



THE MODEL TAILOR 33 

want anything in bis way; the generous creature 
forgives as quickly as he forgets. His anger is only 
roused when you leave him to go to another tailor. 
He is very jealous of any one else doing a kind action, 
and would like to enjoy the monopoly of all the 
Schneider virtues. In his anger he has been known 
to send a lawyer's letter; but if you go to him and 
quietly tell him what you think of his conduct, and 
order a new wrap rascal, he will settle the matter 
himself, and assure you that the thing is purely a 
mistake, and that no one can possibly be more sorry 
for it than he is. 

The Model Tailor takes a pride in seeing his 
clothes on the back of a perfect gentleman. He knows 
no higher gratification than when he is " cutting out" 
a nobleman. His greatest enjoyment is going to the 
Opera, and recognising, from a distance, the Earls, 
and Marquises, and the dashing young Barts. and 
Knts., all walking about in the " charming" coats he 
has made for them. He throws his entire soul into 
his business, and places it high amongst the Fine 
Arts, Sculpture excepted, which in naked truth he 
thinks very meanly of, as he cannot imagine how 
persons can see any beauty in Apollo and Venus, 
dressed as they are, or how a toga can be considered 
a suit of clothes any more than a table-cloth. 

The Model Tailor has exquisite taste, and un- 
limited faith. He praises the figure of every one of 
his customers, and never doubts any one till after four 
years' credit. He strives his utmost to conceal the 
eccentricities of a pair of parenthetical legs, and spares 



34 THE MODEL TAILOli 

no cloth for fattening every miserable lean calf that 
comes under his paternal shears. He disowns fox's 
heads and four-in-hands, and such vagaries upon 
saucer buttons, and does not encourage the style of 
dress invented by the " stable mind.* He warrants 
to fit anything, and boasts, though not much given to 
joking, of having made a dress- coat for a corkscrew. 
He does not recommend things to wash, that are sure 
to leave their complexion behind them in the first 
wash-tub; nor make a practice of registering his 
straps, his belts, button-holes, and every little article 
of costume. He estimates men, not by their measures 
but his own, and in his tailor's eyes he is the best 
man who turns out the best after he has been well 
dressed by him once or twice. He despairs of Lord 
Brougham ever being a great man, but has great 
hopes of Prince Albert. 

The Model Tailor rarely makes a fortune, unless 
he has been very unfortunate through life. An insol 
vency just puts him straight; a first bankruptcy 
leaves him only a handsome surplus, but a second 
one enables him to retire. The sad truth is, that the 
simple child of Eve knows he owes all his business to 
the fact of her biting the apple, and he has not the 
heart to distress any son of Adam for the clothes he 
wears. Perh aps he feels that it would be like pocketing 
the wages of sin. His assignees, therefore, are obliged 
to collect his debts for him, and accordingly, the 
oftener he fails, the richer he becomes. He buys, 
in his old age, a large estate with a small title upon 
it, somewhere in Germany, and leaves his "goose" to 



THE MODEL TAILOR. 



35 



bd cooked by somebody else, universally regretted by 
all those customers who have «"?<vn him since the 
date of his last fiat. He lives a Lappy Victim, ar «i 
dies a contented Baron. Of all tradesmen there is not 
one so estimable, so incredulous, so generous, so ue- 
loved, wheat yoi; meet with one, as the Model Tailcb 




THE MODEL M.P 




TTE lodges in Parliament Street, but has his letters 
-*--*- addressed to the Garrick, or Beform Club. He 
enters the House invariably before prayers, and only 
leaves it with the Speaker. He never misses a Wednes- 
day. He even attends on a Chisholm-Anstey night, 
or when the Danish claims are brought forward He 



THE MODEL M.P, 8T 

is a very great-man at the hustings, making the most 
lavish threats to amend the Constitution and stop the 
supplies ; but somehow, when he gets into the House 
he sinks into one of those Hon. Members whose voice 
is always " inaudible in the gallery." He rises occa- 
sionally, but sits down directly if any other Mem 
ber rises with him. He is not very ambitious, seldom 
going beyond a " laugh." His favourite flight is to 
count out the House on a Derby day. He has not a 
large conscience. He votes uni-emittingly with 
Ministers, and has his reward in a gracious bow from 
Lord John, and occasionally an invitation to dinner, 
when he is quite proud to see his name in print, and 
dispatches innumerable copies of the paper to his 
constituents. 

He has a profound veneration for the British Lion, 
and loves to display his classical knowledge by applaud- 
ing every little bit of Latin and Greek. He is deeply 
skilled in the Parliamentary gamut, ,which he can run 
up and down with the zoological flexibility of a Yon 
Joel, from a crow in C major to a donkey in D alt. 
He is an easy victim for a Committee, and takes a 
pride in attending the deputations of the Commons 
before the Lords. He is a stern upholder of the 
etiquette of the House, and is fond of summoning 
innocent printers before the bar, or of incarcerating 
Irish Members in coal-holes, for contempt. He 
executes the little errands of his party, and on an 
emergency acts as whipper-in. He sups regularly at 
Bellamys, where his profound knowledge of chops 
and steaks is highly respected, and his calls for " lemon 



'88 



THE MODEL M.P 



peel" instantly attended to. The clerks and door 
keepers look up at him as a clock, and put on their 
great-coats and comforters immediately they see him 
come out. 

In private life, the model M.P. attends public 
meetings, and seconds all sorts of charitable resolu- 
tions for the Blacks, and philanthrophic expeditions up 
the Niger. He has been known even to take the chair 
at a benevolent dinner, when the Duke of Cam- 
bridge has been absent by indisposition. He sub 
scribes liberally to hospitals, to all charities, mock and 
real, to every new testimonial, and is too happy to 
forward any absurd plan with the full strength of his 
two initials. He reads every newspaper, and dies in 
the possession of his seat, very obscure, but universally 
regretted by the party which has had his vote for the 
last fifty years. 




THE MODEL DEBTOR 



E never thinks it dear 
so long as he gets a 
thing on credit. No 
dinner is too good 
for him ; the dearest 
wines, the earliest 
peas, the most juve 
nile strawberries, the 
strongest liquors, the 
most exotic luxuries 
— everything that is 
expensive and delici 
ous, so that he is not 
called upon to give 
ready money for it. 
The world pays, and 
V he enjoys himself. 
His cab is found him 
free of expense, and 
by some charm he has a two hundred guinea horse sent 
home to him without paying a single penny for it. The 
rent of his house is several quarters due ; the furni 
ture is of the very best, but not a st'<.!> or a stitch 
of it has been settled for, and the %e-? sheets he 
sleeps in might be taken from under him by his 
washerwoman, for terrible arrears .•*' debt. These 
thoughts, however, do not trouble his happiness. He 




40 THE MODEL DEBTOR. 

trusts, for everything, to his appearance. He knows 
well enough that a man with a shabby exterior never 
gets credit for anything in this world. He has a good 
coat, and on the bank of it orders as many clothes as 
he likes. He has on*) to ask for nats, boots, walking 
sticks, pistols, dressing-cases, and they are all left at 
his " residence," exactly as if he had paid for every 
one of them. No questions are asked — not a soul is 
in a hurry ; for " any one can see he is a perfect gen 
tleman." He nourishes a cheque-book, though his 
drafts would not be liquidated at any other bank but 
Aldgate Pump. The day of reckoning, however, sooner 
or later, comes. Then it is that the wonderful impu- 
dence, the real genius, of the Model Debtor, bursts out 
in all its greatness. It is not convenient for him to 
pay just at present. It would be ruination to sell out 
when the funds are so low. He wonders at Mr. Smith's 
impatience (Smith is his butcher) — the bill can barely 
have been owing two years — but he will call and settle 
next week. Some he threatens to expose; the imper- 
tinence of others he will certainly report to all his 
friends ; and he silences the noisiest with a piece of 
stamped paper, on which his name is inscribed, as the 
representative of hundreds of pounds. But the bubble 
gets larger and larger, till it bursts. Then the Model 
Debtor tumbles from his high estate — if ever he had 
any — and from an " eligible mansion " he falls to a 
" desirable lodging," at a few shillings per week. He 
likes the Surrey side of the Thames best 

His life is now a constant game of hide-and-seek. 
He is nevsr " at home," especially to top-boots and 



THE MODEL DEBTOR. 41 

Jerusalem noses, that bring letters and wait for an- 
swers in the passage. He grows nervous. Every knock 
at the door throws him back, and he rings the bell 
violently two or three times, whispers to the servant 
through the door, turns the key, and crouches down 
with his ear at the key-hole. He looks out of the 
window before he ventures in the street. He only 
walks when he cannot afford to pay for a cab. Om 
nibuses are dangerous: it is not so easy to avoid a 
creditor inside. He selects the dreariest thorough 
fares, and never penetrates into a cul-de-sac, or ap- 
proaches within a mile of Chanceiy Lane. His 
impudence, however, does not desert him. He never 
recollects any bill whatever, and if stopt and ques 
tioned about his name, he threatens in the grandest 
manner to call the police. When pressed for money, 
he is sure the account was paid long ago, and that he 
has got the receipt somewhere at home. He is most 
fruitful in excuses, and lavish in promises. He gene 
rally expects a " good round sum in a day or two." 
He can never get his accounts in, and was disap 
pointed only last week of a large balance he had relied 
upon for paying your little " trine." As he falls lower 
in the world, he gets meeker. He would pay if he 
could. All he asks for is time. Business is very bad 
— never was worse. He only wants to look round 
him. He hopes you won't be hard upon him; but if 
prosecuted, if goaded to death in this way, sooner than 
lead the life he does, he will go into the Gazette, and 
then his creditors must not blame him if they don't 
get a farthing. He means well, if they will onlv leave 



42 THE MODEL DEBTOR. 

him alone. He will be happy to give you a bill. He 
has a wife and seven children. In fact, he is a most 
affectionate parent, and the sacrifices he has made for 
his'family no one can tell but himself — which he does 
upon every possible opportunity. He grows tired of 
answering letters, and as for giving the name of his 
solicitor, he hates the law too much to do it. He meets 
a bill and a bailiff with equal horror ; but does not care 
much for either, if he can only be sure of a " good long 
rim." He is very sensitive about the left shoulder, 
going off, like a hair-trigger, at the slighest touch. His 
great day is Sunday. He is then everywhere — in the 
Park especially — and any one to see him would imagine 
•' he could look the whole world in the face, and defy 
any one to say he owed him a shilling. ,, He is brave, 
too, during Vacation. He is very intimate with the 
law, and has a profound respect for the Statute of 
Limitations ; but thinks England not worth living in 
since the County Courts Act. He carries his anti 
pathy, indeed, so far as to run over some fine morning 
to Boulogne and never coming back again, leaving 
all his property, though, behind him in a carpet-bag 
replete with bricks. There his first care is to 
cultivate a moustache, and to procure new clothes, 
new dinners, fresh victims. He is always expecting 
a remittance by the next post. His bankers, however, 
are very remiss, and he is lodged at last by his land- 
lord in the Hotel d'Angleterre — in plain English, the 
prison. He only asks for time, and at last he gets 
more of it than he likes, for he is locked up for two 
or three years in jail, unless he is very lucky and is 



THE M0DE1 DEBTOR 



43 



liberated by a Kevolution. He disappears no one 
knows where. His friends wonder what has become 
of him, till there is a vague report that he has been 
seen as an attache to one of the gaming-houses about 
Leicester Square, or, if he is tolerably well off, that he 
has been recognised on the road to Epsom, driving a 
cab, with a large number (say 2584) painted upon it 

The Model Debtor is honest at last, for he has 
arrived at that stage of life at which no man will put 
any trust in him. He pays his way — turnpikes inclu 
ded— and does not overcharge more than what is 
perfectly Hansom. He pays ready money for every 
thing, even down to the waterman on the cabstand, 
and gives himself out as " a gentleman who has seen 
better days." His great boast, however, is that 
all through the ups and downs of his racketty career, 
he never left unpaid a single debt of honour. Doubt- 
lessly, this is a great source of consolation to the 
numerous tradesmen to whom he never paid a penny I 




THE MODEL FRIEND. 



borrows money, of 
course, and pleases 
himself about return- 
ing it. Your house is 
his house — your pro- 
per ty just as much his 
property. He invades 
your library at all 
hours, and smuggles 
what books he likes, 
and lends them to 
whom he chooses. He 
rides your horses, and 
buys Havannah cigars 
and Eau-de-Cologne, 
and all sorts of bar- 
gains for you, no mat- 
ter whether you want 
them or not. He has 
a patent for giving 
advice, and speaking his mind very freely at all times. 
He must be consulted in any step you undertake, from 
the purchase of a poodle to the choice of a wife. He 
wears your collars, your gloves, and does not mind 
putting on your great coat, or even, at a stretch, wear- 




THE MODEL FRIEND. 



45 



ing your polished leather boots, and walking off with 
them. He will stop with you a month, if you ask 
him for a week, and will bring one or two especial 
friends — "capital fellows" he calls them — if you ask 
him to dinner. In return, he is obliging, obsequious, 
has a wonderful capacity for drinking and smoking ; 
tells a good story, and sings a good song ; wins your 
money at ecarte with the best grace in the world ; 
will get you to accept a bill, and almost persuade 
you he is doing you a favour ; and if you should be 
penniless to-morrow, he will meet you in the street, 
and, as a Model Friend, cut you. 




THE MODEL FAST MAN. 




U know him at once by 
his being the noisiest, 
the most conspicuous 
person wherever he is. 
His dress, too, never 
fails to attract public 
notice. He is unhappy 
if no t seen— he is miser- 
able if not heard. 

In the street he 
flourishes a little stick, 
which, for want of 
someth ing better to do, 
he rattles against the 
railings. He stares 
ladies in the face, and 
takes his hat off to 
carriages, and delights in kissing his hand to some 
,old dowager who is looking out of a dravv ing-room 
window. A sedan-chair is his great amusement. 
He stops the porters, and asks them what they 
will take him to Buckingham Palace and back 
again for ? He directs a hackney-coach to drive as 
fast as possible to the British Museum, and to ask 
Sir Henry Ellis to be kind enough to put it under a 
glass-case amonq; the Fossils. He takes a card that is 



THE MODEL FAST MAN. 47 

offered to him by a street conjuror, and gives him in 
return one of his own, with an intimation that he 
"shall be happy to see him at any time between two 
and four." He walks behind fat old ladies, and is 
very loud in the praises " of the jolly mad bull there is 
in the next street." He rings area-bells and inquires 
"if they could oblige him with the loan of a cucumber- 
slicer for five minutes. " He removes any pewter-pot 
he finds, and knocks at the door to ask "if it belongs 
to them: it was hanging outside the railings, and 
might be stolen by some unprincipled person." News- 
venders are his especial favourites. He calls them 
from the other side of the way to ask "if they have 
got the Independent Doorknocker of 1 356 ; if not, he 
should like to see the third edition of the Times to- 
morrow." He makes cruel faces to little babies as 
they hang over their nurses' shoulders, and is flattered 
if he makes them cry. If he meets with twins, he is 
happy indeed. He shouts into sausage shops as he 
passes by— "D'ye want any cats, dogs, or kittens, to- 
day?" He hails an omnibus, and whilst it is stopping, 
turns down the next street ; and he looks at a cabman 
till he drives up to him, when he wonders what the 
"cabbie" wants: he was only admiring his handsome 
whiskers. If he finds a looking-glass he adjusts his 
toilet in it, and takes off his hat and bows to himself, 
exclaiming, " On my word, you are looking remarkably 
well; I never saw you look better," He looks at the 
milliners through the shop-windows, and darts at them 
his most piercing smiles. He stares at the watch- 



*U THE MODEL FAST MAN. 

makers at their work, with intense curiosity, and talks 
to them with his lingers, till they get up and leave 
their stools w T ith great indignation. If he meets the 
Lord Mayor's carriage w T ith three footmen on the foot- 
board, he is sure to call out "Whip behind !" and he 
laughs his loudest if the coachman should uncon- 
sciously lay his whip across their calves. He is very 
rich in noises. His "Va-ri-e-ty" is unequalled at 
tw r o o'clock in the morning; and his collection of 
"Ri-too-loorals," and "Itum-ti-oddities," and select 
choruses, is not to be surpassed by the oldest habitue 
of the Coal-hole. He whistles, too, through his fin- 
gers ; and can bark, crow, and bray quite naturally, 
especially inside Exeter Hall, or any place where he 
shouldn't do it. One of his proudest achievements is 
to enter an omnibus crowded with females, and to 
display on his knees a large jar, marked " Leeches. " 
He delights, too, in sprinkling cayenne-pepper and 
snuff on the floor of a dancing-party after supper, or 
in going behind the cornet-a-piston, and making him 
laugh during a long solo, when the struggling laughter 
oozing out in short gasps through the valves, nearly 
sends him into fits. He glories in sending in six 
" brandies warm" to the chairman and different gentle- 
men on the platform of a Temperance Meeting. He 
makes a practice of ringing the bells of all doctors as 
he walks home at night. 

In the theatre, he slams the box door, and shouts 
"Box-keeper!" with the most stentorian lungs. He 
is vociferous in his applause, and sparkles up at the 



THE MODEL FAST MAX. 49 

prospect of a row. He likes to sneeze during the 
pathetic parts, and shouts "Brayvo, Wright !" when 
the old father is blessing his long-lost child. He revels 
in a burlesque with plenty of Amazons in it. He cries 
out " Encore ! " at everything, but Hicks especially. 

In respectable society he is awkard, and generally 
very quiet. He does not dance, nof knowing what to 
say to his partner. He hangs about the door and 
staircase, and consoles himself with the cakes and 
wine ; he leaves early, for " he is dying for a pipe and 
a drop of beer." 

In his appearance he selects the gayest fast colours, 
and the more the merrier. His shirt is curiously 
illuminated with pink ballet-girls. He has the winner 
of the Derby in his pocket-handkerchief. His boots- 
are very delicate, only keeping body and sole together 
with the aid of large mother-of-pearl buttons. He 
revels in a white hat. His trousers are of the chess- 
board pattern. His shirt-pin is an Enormous Goose- 
berry, that would make the fortune of a penny-a-liner. 
His coat has a Newmarket expression, of the very 
deepest green. He is above gloves, but encourages a 
glass, suspended by some magic process in his left eye. 

His accomplishments are various. He carries in 
his waistcoat pocket the stump of a clay pipe, the bowl 
of which is quite black. He can walk along the para- 
pet of Waterloo Bridge. He can sleep in the station- 
house upon an emergency. He can slide, skate, and 
box a little, and play the French horn. He can win 
a game of billiards, and give you twenty, He is " up 



50 TIIE MODEL PAST MAN. 

to a dodge or two " at cards. He can imitate all the 
actors, and a brick falling down the chimney. He can 
fry a pancake in his hat, and light a cigar at a lamp- 
post. He can manage a pair of sculls, and tool a tandem 
through Smithfield Market. He can talk slang with a 
novelist, and " chaff an ' University Man ' off his legs." 
He can also "do a bill," and many other things, as 
well as persons, that ought not to be done. He is pro- 
ficient in all the gentish graces of life, and knows "a 
small wrinkle or two " of everything. High life, low 
life, gambling life, sporting life, fashionable life, every 
hind of life he is intimately acquainted with, particu- 
larly fast life. This consists in his beginning the day 
six hours after every body else, and finishing it six 
hours later. It implies the knowledge, on his part, 
of the Polka, with certain embellishments, and a con- 
stant attendance at Casinos, and other places where 
that knowledge can be displayed. It involves, also, a 
course of theatres, sporting-houses, masquerades, sing- 
ing-taverns, cigar-shops, cider-cellars, and early coffee 
houses. To all of these the Model Fast Man is an 
accomplished guide. He condemns everything as 
slow that does not keep pace with the rapidity with 
which he runs, or rather gallops, through life ; and 
he annihilates everybody as slow who presumes to 
live like a rational creature. All books are slow — 
Shakspere is slow — all domestic, all quiet enjoyments 
are slow. The country is very slow, and so are sisters. 
He even calls the railway slow. His great impulse 
is, "Fast bind, fast find," and he sighs that society ia 



THE MODEL FAST MAN. 



not bound by the same fast law. He is without shame, 
as he is without gentlemanly feeling. He is familiar 
with servants, is very facetious with conductors, calls 
policemen by their letters, jokes with waiters, and 
does not care how he insults an inferior. Impudence, to 
him, is fun — brutality, the excess of refinement- 
giving pain his most exquisite enjoyment. His highest 
notion of humour is saying to everything, " I believe 
you, my bo-o-o-o-y. " In the morning — that is, the 
afternoon — he is feverish ; in the evening — that is to 
say, four o'clock in the morning — he is what he calls 
"fresh." His first call is for soda-water, his last 
for brandy. Such is the great beginning, and such 
the grand end, of the existence of the Model Fast 
Man. 




MODEL CLERKS. 




^Inl P Lawyeii?s Olebk enters the office at 

v ' " ~~ nine, and leaves at eight. His 

only holiday is when he is sent 
into the country to serve a writ. 
He has a " fine bold hand/' and 
can "fair copy" two 
brief sheets an hour. 
He does not throw up 
his salary because he is 
too proud to engross 
skins of parchment ; on 
the contrary, he has a 
pair of false sleeves (like umbrella-cases) for the pur- 
pose. He knows exactly the legal price of every- 
thing, from a savage assault to a breach of promise 
of marriage. , He is not fond of taxing, and is ready 
to cry if not allowed his "Letters and Messengers, " 
every Term. His great delight in an action is to 
"get costs." He then shows the admirable 
system of "the office," by proving in how short a 
time a long bill can be made out, sent in, execution 
served, with the sheriff's sale, if not paid within a 
fortnight. He has no patience with people who come 
to beg for time — he is very sorry, he has but one duty 
to perform. That duty is invariably an appointment 
with the obsequious John Doe, made by Her Gracious 




i iMHIiMI 



EL CLEIKS 



MODEL CLERKS. 5& 

Majesty at the Court of Exchequer, or some other 
place cf amusement. He does not read novels during 
office-hours, nor roast chesnuts, nor apples, nor act 
plays, nor toss for beer, nor learn " The Wolf," or any 
song, comic or dreary, when "the Governor" is out. 
His soul is in his master's pocket, and he always 
appeals, or has a rejoinder ready, or a new bill on the 
file, if the client can only afford it. His cry, like 
Demosthenes', is always "Action, action, action," and 
in his opinion the best reward a good action can have 
is a Chancery suit. He is cautious as he is zealous — 
keeps a copy of every letter, almost dislikes saying, 
"How d'ye do" without a witness, has a horror of 
giving promises on paper, and always tries to inflate 
6s. 8d. into the dimensions of 13s. \&. He would blush 
to take any of the office paper home with him. He 
understands perfectly when a client has called to 
complain of delay ; in which case, " Mr. Hookham 
has always just stepped out — he believes it is to move 
in your very suit. " He takes but half-an-hour for 
his dinner, and only allows himself ten minutes for 
his tea. When he serves you with a writ, he hopes 
"you will not be offended — it is his most painful 
duty." The same with a distress ; he throws a cloak 
of politeness over every step that gradually leads a 
man from a lawyer's office to the Queen's Bench. 
By half-starving, the strongest self-denial, little agen- 
cies from friends he has recommended to the office, 
and the Christmas Boxes of a long range of years, he 
eaves a hundred pounds, and, working upon half salary 



54 MODEL CLERKS. 

in lieu of a premium, gets articled to his master. How- 
ever, the County Courts have beggared a fine pro- 
fession, and Lord Brougham has so cut down the 
profits of the Law to barely a herring a-day, that he 
is obliged to come back and occupy the same stool 
he has grown grey upon during his clerkhood. He 
buries all ambition in his "pad," takes to copying 
after office hours, in order to gain a few pounds, when 
his fingers will no longer be able to hold a pen, and 
ultimately resigns his desk to some young man, who, 
like himself, with a strong constitution, and probably 
a generous heart, sells himself to lose both, for the 
matter of eighteen shillings (and "a rise") as a 
Lawyer's Clerk. 

The Eailway Clerk dresses smartly. He is a 
friend of a Director, or a cousin of a large Shareholder. 
Business with him is quite a secondary consideration. 
He opens his little trap-door five minutes before the 
train, and closes it the minute the clock has struck. 
He will take your money if you want a ticket,butmind, 
he is not answerable for any mistake. He has no 
time to count change, or answer questions about trains, 
or attend to stupid people who come inquiring about 
the persons who are killed by yesterday's accident. It 
is not his business. He cannot attend to every one at 
once, and he runs his diamond fingers through his 
rich, Macassared hair. It's really no fault of his if 
you lose the train — you ought to have come sooner; 
and then he whips off, with a very pretty penknife, a 



MODEL CLEBKS. 65 

sharp corner that pains the symmetry of one of hio 
filbert nails. What should he know about dogs ? — you 
had better inquire at the luggage train. You can 
write to the newspapers by all means, if you like : the 
newspapers don't pay him. The parcels are not in his 
department — the porters perhaps can tell . He is very 
sorry he has no change for a five pound note — he has 
no doubt you can get it round the corner. He yawns 
all the morning — his eyes are only half open at eight 
o'clock, and his white waistcoat betrays his dreadful 
impatience to get to the Opera, as the time draws 
slowly towards the mail train. What he does between 
the dreary intervals, as we cannot peep over the walls 
of mahogany into the small circle of his duties, we 
cannot tell. On a Sunday, however, his usual amia- 
bility deserts him. His cambric shirt is beautifully 
smooth, but his temper is sadly ruffled. The excur- 
sions upset him. The number of absurd questions 
annoy him . He wonders how people can be so foolish, 
and at last makes a resolution not to answer any 
more inquiries ; and the Railway Clerk knows his own 
dignity too well not to keep it. He becomes as silent 
as a Government Surveyor's Eeport over a " Dreadful 
collision." He only stares; but occasionally trou- 
bles himself to the utmost of his abilities to give a nod 
that may express "Yes " or "No," just as the person 
pleases . Beyond this, the Railway Clerk is as obliging 
as most Clerks, and he has this advantage, that he i3 
very good-looking, and after coming out of an omnibus 
on a wet day, is quite pleasant to look at. In the heat 



58 MODEL CLERKS. 

of summer he looks cool — in the depths of winter he 
always appears warm and comfortable. He is really a 
pattern of politeness to ladies, and smiles most con- 
descendingly to pretty girls, displaying his gallantry 
and white teeth in a thousand little ways. He was 
evidently intended by Nature as an ornament to a 
tea-party, or born to grace a pic-nic. The only pity is, 
that his friends ever made him a Eailway Clerk. 

The Government Clerk is the most refined speci- 
men. He has grown so mild by practice, that he 
never loses his temper. He knows his station better 
than to argue, or dispute, or contradict, or differ in 
opinion with any one. He has a sovereign remedy 
that protects him from all complaints, mild or 
virulent, and that is, deafness. Do what he will, he 
cannot hear. It is a great impediment that has 
often been tried, but never been cured. You must 
speak two or three times, and very loudly, too, before 
you can make him hear a single word. He has then 
a very indistinct notion of what you want, and must 
read the account of last night's farce deliberately 
through, and look at himself in the glass, before he 
can arrive to a perfect comprehension that you are in 
want of anything. " Oh ! yes ; he recollects, you 
wish to pay the legacy duty on the will of Mrs. 
Trinkumkolee, who died in the State of Nincom- 
poopoo, in the year — he is very sorry to have kept 
you waiting." It is in fact in the art of putting a 
person off that the Government Clerk is especially 



MODEL CLEEKS. 57 

clever. He does this so politely, that though offended 
you are yet afraid to give explosion to your anger. 
"He will be with you in one instant ; and he retires 
with a new coat into the next room to give audience 
to one of his tailors. "He shall be happy to attend 
upon you directly;" and he finishes to his fellow- 
clerks a most curious incident that occurred to him 
last night at the Polish Ball. * Will you be kind 
enough to take a chair ?" whilst he perfects a Sweep 
for the next St. Leger. You cannot possibly be rude 
with one who is so polite. At three o'clock he locks 
his desk, and commences his toilet. After that hour 
every one is most blandly requested to take the trouble 
to call again the following day. At four o'clock, as 
soon as the quarter before it strikes, he is to be seen 
on the water, or in Hyde Park, or on the top of an 
omnibus, so neatly attired, you never would suspect 
he had been doing a hard day's business. In fact, 
who can tell the papers he has diligently read, or the 
tender notes he has beautifully written ; or the happy 
bits of literature he has knocked off for Punch, or 
Blackwood'* s Magazine ; or the heaps of " Don't 
love" and "Do love," he has swept together for 
gorgeous illuminated songs, if Balfe only likes to 
have them ; or the quires of paper he has richly car- 
tooned ; or the endless quills he has cut into tooth- 
picks, or the countless variety of things, all requiring 
time, and some degree of ability, that a Government 
Clerk is expected to do when he gives his presence 
to his ungrateful country, from the very earlv hour of 



58 MODEL CLERKS. 

ten in the morning to as late an hour as four in the 
afternoon. Sometimes, also, he is a dramatic author, 
that is to say, he translates French pieces, and it cannot 
be pleasant to be interrupted in the middle of a most 
impassioned scene, between a countess and a senti- 
mental barber's boy, merely to give a stupid date, 
or to hand over the office copy of some dreary docu- 
ment. Hasn't he to keep himself clean too, all the 
while ? for, call when you will, you always find the 
poor fellow busily employed r gashing his hands, 
or combing his hair, or dusting his boots, or mending 
his nails. Before we laugh, we should really pause 
to consider whether there is any one who could do 
as many things so well in the same short space of 
time, as the Government Clerk.* 

The Banker's Clerk is born to a high stool. He 
is taught vulgar fractions, patience, and morals, in a 
suburban school. At fourteen he shoulders the office- 
quill. He copies letters from morning till night, but 
has no salary. He is to be " remembered at Christ- 
mas." He is out in all weathers. At twenty he is im- 
pervious to rain, snow, and sunshine. At last he gets 
£40 per annum. Out of that revenue he pays £5 a- 



* Caution.— The above specimen refers only to the highest 
grade of Government Clerks — the fine gentlemen who get 
stupendous salaries for doing nothing, and make a favour of 
doing that. The poor sub-ordinates do work, and get almost 
nothing for it. Promotion is hopeless without patronage— the 
best talent of little avail, unless you have some one with a title 
to make it evident for you. If you wish to bury your son alive, 
get him a situation in a Government Office. 



MODEL CLEItKS. 59 

year to the " Guarantee Fund." He walks five miles 
to business, and five miles home. He never stirs out 
without his umbrella. He never exceeds twenty 
minutes for his dinner. He drinks water ; " beer gets 
into his head." He has three holidays a-year-— 
Christmas Day and Good Friday being two of them — 
and then walks to the office and back again to pass 
away the time. He runs about all day with a big 
chain round his waist, and a gouty bill-book in his 
breast-pocket. T marries, and asks for an increase 
of salary. He is told " the house can do without him." 
He reviews every day a long army of ledgers, and has 
to " write up" the customer's books before he leaves. 
He reaches home at nine o'clock, and falls asleep over 
the yesterday's paper, borrowed from the public- 
house. He reaches £80 a-year. He fancies his fortune 
is made ; but small boots and shoes, and large school 
bills, stop him on the high road to independence, and 
bring him nearer to Levi than Eothschild. He tries 
to get "evening employment," but his eyes fail him. 
He grows old, and learns that " the firm never pen- 
sions." One morning his stool is unoccupied, and a 
subscription is made amongst his old companions to 
pay the expenses of his funeral. So much for clerk- 
ship I 



THE MODEL GENTLEMAN. 



Drives no stage-coach. 
He never broke a bank . 
He has never been 
known to dress up as a 
\ Xlk^ J oc k e y> or try practical 
vwfcpv" J°^ es on watermen, or 
ST^rW J J empty flour-bags on 
chimney-sweeps. He 
shuns cross-barred 
trowsers, horticultural 
scarfs, overgrown pins 
and can wear a waist- 
coat without a cable's 
length of gold chain 
round it. His linen is 
not illustrated, but 
beautifully clean. He 
never does "a little 
discounting," nor lend his hand to "flying a kite." 
His aversion for a Gent is softened by pity. He can 
look at a lady without the aid of an eye-glass. He 
allows a performer to talk louder than himself at the 
Theatre, and does not spring on the stage if there is a 
row at the Opera. He abhors a lie as he does a 
sheriff s officer. He is not prodigal of oaths, and is 
equally sparing of perfume. He does not borrow his 
English from the stables, and never puts his lips 




THE MODEL GENTLEMAN. 61 

through a dreary fashionable course of lisping. He is 
not too proud to walk, or to carry an umbrella if it 
rains, and never waltzes with spurs after supper, even 
in uniform. He never bets beyond his means, and is 
not fond of playing high at cards. He never rained a 
young man — to say nothing worse. He bows scrupu- 
lously, even to a crossing-sweeper. He never shrinks 
from an 1. 0. U.^ nor is afraid of a bill, nor seized 
with a sudden shortness of memory at the sight of an 
old friend, whose coat is not so young as it used to be. 
He has never proved his cowardice by fighting a duel, 
giving satisfaction always in a more gentlemanly way. 
He pays for his clothes, disdaining to wear his tailor's 
in consideration for valuable introductions. His 
horses, too, are his own, and not purchased of his 
friends by a series of profitable exchanges. He is not 
madly attached to billiard-rooms, nor is he seen at 
Casinos. He locks up his conquests in his own heart, 
and his love-letters in his desk, rarely disclosing either 
to his most intimate friends. He does not bully his 
servants, nor joke with them, nor cut a man because 
his father was in trade. He is not obsequious to a 
lord, nor does he hang on the skirts of the aristo- 
cracy, knowing that a man's nobility does not depend 
entirely upon his title, however old and unstained 
it may be. He travels to enjoy himself, and does 
not attempt to crush poor foreigners with English 
gold or pride. He values a thing, not by its price, but 
by its real value, and does not blush to drink beer if 
he is thirsty. He does not think it essential to his 



62 THE MODEL GENTLEMAN. 

reputation to keep late hours, to pull down sign- 
boards, bait policemen, and besiege toll-keepers, during 
the night. He has no such violent love for door- 
knockers as to induce him to collect them. He is not 
facetious with waiters, or given to knock down a cab- 
man by way of settling a fare. He is not afraid of 
laughing if he is amused, even in public, or of 
handing down an old lady with a turban to dinner, or 
dancing with his wife. He likes quiet, but does not 
hate children, and thinks a seat in the House of Com- 
mons not worth the bribery and continual riot. He 
was never the hero of any wager, riding, running, 
racing, rowing, eating, or swimming, and does not 
know a single prize-fighter. He is fond of amuse- 
ments, but does not instal himself at the Opera every 
night, because it is fashionable. He follows the races ; 
but goes down without a deg-cart and a key bugle. He 
is unobtrusive in his dress, and very retired in his 
jewellery, and has an antipathy for a white hat with a 
black band, and all violent contradictions either in 
dress or conversation. He is generous, but does not 
give grand dinners and expensive suppers to persons 
he does not know or care about. He lends money; 
and, if he borrows any, he makes a strange practice of 
returning it. He rarely "speaks his mind," and is 
very timid in msliing into a quarrel, of husband and 
wife especially. He is a favourite with the ladies, but 
does not put too much starch in his politeness, or too 
much sugar in his compliments. In matters of scandal 
he is dumb, if not exactly deaf, and in the rumours, 



THE MODEL GENTLEMAN. 



63 



he only believes half ( the kinder half, too ) of what he 
hears. He is not prejudiced himself, but has a kind 
toleration for the prejudices of others. His golden 
rule is never to hurt the feelings of anybody, or to 
injure a living creature. All his actions, all his 
sentiments, are shaped to that noble end; and he 
dies, as he lives, sans pear et sans rejproche. His 
great creed is to do unto others as he would wish others 
to do unto him. This is the Model Gentleman. 






zn^iiz 'n^rnrnin^ 



W Cest vaincmenl que Von > presume, 
iDccjaltr ce divin&ijetj 
gPuis qti'il aest ny pinccm ny plume , 
mJuimifsc en exprivier wn trait. 



\\ 



[This engraving is copied from a rare old work, published at Paris 
in 1647, called ".La Galerie des Femmes Fortes, par le Pierre le 
Moyne, de la Compagnie de Jesus."] 



A MODEL IRISH SPEAKER. 




XJOW have we been treated for the last ten thou- 
sand years by the cold-blooded Saxon? My 
hair stands on end to tell you. {Cheers.) Hasn't 
England so managed matters in her own favour 
that she receives the light of the sun two-and- 
twenty minutes before she permits a single ray 
to come to us ? (A voice; " It's true ! ") England 
may boast of her own enlightenment; but is this jus- 
tice to Ireland? ( Tremendous Cries of " No! No!") 
I have next to accuse England of keeping aloof from 
us fully sixty miles at the nearest point. Talk of our 
Union after that ! ( Vociferous cheering, which lasted 
several hours.) No, my countrymen, it is only a parch- 
ment Union, a lying thing, made of the skin of the inno- 
cent sheep ; but before we go to bed this night we'll 
see that bit of parchment torn into countless strhos, so 



THE MODEL IEISH SPEAKEB. 65 

that every tailor in Ireland shall have, to-morrow 
morning, a remnant of it in his hands, to measure 
twelve millions of happy Irishmen with. (At this 
point the proceedings were interrupted by sice persons 
being carried out of the room who had fainted. They 
are supposed to be tailors.) Well, sir, I denounce from 
this place the atrocious cupidity of England, by which 
she monopolises the tin mines entirely, almost all the 
iron and coal, and thus cramps, sir, our native in- 
dustry and commerce. Why has not Ireland her own 
iron and coal ? ( Cries of u Why not ?") I ask, again, 
why have we no tin? ("Shame ! Shame /") and no 
brass ? no zinc ? no salmon ? no elephants ? no peri- 
winkles ? no king? (Immense cheering, during which 
the honourable speaker sat down and slept for a 
quarter of anhour y and then continued.) Oh ! my be- 
loved countrymen, I have had a most beautiful vision. 
I thought I saw every field of Ireland covered with 
dancing corn, and embroidered with the most beautiful 
sheep, whose wool was more exquisite than all the 
Berlin wool that was ever made in England ( Cheers) ; 
and I thought, my countrymen, its rivers were filled 
with more salmon and more periwinkles than ever 
carolled on the muddy Saxon shore (Cheers) ; and I 
thought, my countrymen, that on the brow of every 
other hill the mighty elephant was reposing under 
the peaceful shade of the shamrock (more cheers) ; and 
again, I thought the corner of each field was filled 
with more iron, and tin, and brass than would suffice 
to build a railway from here to the bottom of Eng- 



66 THE MODEL IRISH SPEAKER. 

land's perdition (Laughter and Cheers); and Xthoughl 
— may the beautiful vision be never effaced from the 
iris of my weeping eyes ! — that there were no dark 
clouds such as now lour o'er our bright country, bui 
that the whole scene, so intensely Irish, was illumined 
as if with a resplendent sun, with our own gas. (En- 
thusiastic shouts, the echoes of which have not yet sub- 
sidedin the neighbourhood of the Castle.) Oh ! oh ! 
when will this vision be realised ? When shall we see 
the poor Irishman — the finest peasant of the world — 
boiling his potato ? Ah ! the plundering Saxon cannot 
wring that from us ; though no thanks to the monster 
for the blight— (Shame) — boiling his potato, I say, 
with his own coal, in a pot made of his own iron, and 
eat it on a plate made of his own pewter, with a knife 
bought with his own tin. Never ! never ! until the 
Eepeal is carried. (Three cheers for Repale.) Do 
you think you '11 ever have it ? ("We will; wewillP) 
Believe me, in all sincerity, you never will, until you 
pull up the lamp-posts and make bayonets of them, 
and have wrenched off every knocker and bell pull, 
and melted them into bullets and cannon-balls, 
(Cheers.) I know I am talking sedition; but I dare 
them to come and tear the shoestrings out my boots, 
before I unsay a single word of what I have said. 
(Frantic applause.) They dare not prosecute me 
if they would; for then College Green would 
be crowded with Irish kings. (Cheers.) The British 
oak would be supplanted with the four-leaved sham- 
rock of Ireland. (Cheers.) The Queen of England 



THE MODEL IRISH SPEAKER 



67 



would be an Irishwoman— ( Cheers)— -and I should die 
happy in the thought that the majestic tree of Kepeal 
had been watered with my blood, and blossomed, and 
borne such golden fruit, that unborn nations, far from 
beyond the poles, were coming on their knees to taste 
them. (It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm 
which brolce out when the Hon. Gentleman resumed 
his seat on the ledge of the window. As many as 
had hats, threw them into the air ; those who had 
coats } took them off, and dragged them along the 
ground; whilst a few of the hardiest natives were 
observed to bury their faces in their coat-tails, and 
weep audibly. The cheering was lcejpt ujp till a very 
late hour, and the meeting brolce ujp a little before 
daylight, after giving ninety-nine cheers, and a 
little one in, u for the blessed cause of Repale") 




THE MODEL BANKER. 



E IS educated at Eton, 
and makes love to 
lords. They borrow 
his money, and laugh 
at him, as " a toady.' 9 
He enters the banking 
-house at twenty-one, 
and looks upon the 
clerks as servants-^ 
as breathing copying 
machines. He belongs 
to all sorts of clubs. 
He is a great authority 
upon wines, horses, 
and women. He- 
keeps his yacht, and 
never stops in town 
after the Opera. He walks through the City as if it 
belonged to him. He is great in jewellery, and very 
particular about his riding whips. He wears in 
winter white cords and buckskin gloves,and subscribes 
to the nearest " hounds." His wristbands show an 
inch and a half. He marries a baronet's daughter, 
and talks nothing but the Blue Book ever afterwards 
He has a house in Belgravia, and a seat in the North. 
He has noisy luncheons in the "parlour." His dinners. 




THE MODEL BANKER. 



G9 



elicit a little paragraph of praise from the Morning 
Post. His name, too, is generally amongst the 
" fashionables whom we observed last night at Her 
Majesty's Theatre." He has always a particular en- 
gagement at the West-end at two, at which hour his 
bay cob invariably calls for him. His printed charities 
are very extensive — one sum always for himself, 
another for the Co. He is very nervous during panics, 
and when there is a run upon the bank, it is always 
owing to " the pressure of the times." He pays his cre- 
ditors half-a-crown in the pound,and lives on the £3,000 
a-year " settled on his wife." We never knew a Model 
Banker fall yet, that 
his fall was not agree- ^=||| 
ably softened by a snug Jglljf 
little property "settled 
upon his wife." From 
this we infer that the 
Model Banker is a most 
rigid cultivator of the 
matrimonial virtues, 
and if he forgets occa- 
sionally what he owes 
to himself and to others 
he remembers to a 
nicety what is due to 
his wife. It is only the 
system of Double En- 
try applied to Banking. 




THE MODEL SPONGE. 




AS the dinner-hour strikes, 
the Sponge knocks at tho 
door. Sometimes he brings a 
bag of filberts with him. The 
host thanks him, and produces 
sundry bottles of his best port. 
Sometimes he sends a hare. He 
knows that the first rule of society 
is, that whoever sends a hare is 



necessarily invited to dinner. 
Sometimes a box for the play. 
The result is always the same. 
The sponge knows all the secret 
springs of the heart and the 
stomach (they too fre- 
quently lodge together), 
which, ever so slightly 
touched upon, draw out a 
gratuitous dinner. His 
conversation, too, is got up as neatly as himself. 
His fronts are richer than those of Eegent Street. 
His jokes, also, are beautifully dressed. His scan- 
dal (for the ladies) is always of the newest cut, 



THE MODEL SPONGE. 71 

and liis anecdotes fit as if they had been measured 
expressly for the company. He leaves early. He has a 
tea in the neighbourhood — a dear friend who is ill. 
He does not stop lung, however, for he recollects he 
knows a hot supper just close by. He carves — his 
manoeuvres with the knife and fork exercise, in fact, 
are perfect — helps everybody to a nicety, and does 
not forget the old proverb which says, that he who 
wishes to be helped in this world must, first of all, 
help himself— so he keeps the liver wing for himsell. 
He goes home with a stranger, and breakfasts with him. 
He remembers, however, about two o'clock, that he 
has business in the City. His visit occurs, curiously 
enough, just at luncheon time. He is invited "to pick 
a bone," and devours a chicken. " The air of the City 
is so bracing." His appetite is most accommodating. 
Its range seems to exceed even that of Soyer's kitchen 
at the Keform Club. He likes everything. Cold meat 
does not daunt him. A large family does not terrify 
him. Saturday, however, is the day of the week he 
likes the least. It is the day of hashes, of make-shifts, 
of pickles,bread-pudding,and liver and bacon. Sunday 
is his grand day, but he gives the preference of his 
society to those houses which do not involve a walk, 
or a cab, or an omnibus home. At his own house he 
is — but here we must drop the Sponge, for we would 
not go home with him for any price. We cannot 
fancy a Sponge sponging upon himself; the sight 
would be awful. To be properly appreciated, the 
Sponge must be seen at other persons' tables. He 



72 



THE MODEL SPONGE. 



fattens the best in town. The country offers too large 
a field for his exploits, which, unless he keeps a horse, 
he cannot possibly get over, or bag more than one 
meal a day. He is the gentleman-greengrocer who 
attends dinners, and waits at evening-parties without 
the fee. 




THE MODEL LODGER. 




E is a quiet gentle- 
man. Asmile is per- 
manently settled on 
his clean face. He 
wipes his boots on 
the mat before he 
S walks up-stairs. He 
pays a high rent, 
and has few friends. 
He leaves his 
. drawers open. He 
A has a cellar of coals 
^. in at a time. He 
— ^ takes in a news- 
paper, and is not in a hurry for it in the morning. He 
is never out later than ten. He shaves with cold 
water. He never adds up a bill. He is fond of 
children. He likes to buy them sweetmeats, and to 
take one occasionally to the theatre. He never has 
supper. He never dines at home, excepting on a 
Sunday, and that rarely. The landlady orders then 
his dinner : it is generally a very large joint, with 
plenty of vegetables, a very large pie, and a very large 
slice of cheese. He never inquires for the joint, or 
the pie, or anything, the next day. He lends his 



74 



THE MODEL LODGER 



books cheerfully. He is in doubt about the exact 
number of his shirts. He rarely rings the bell. He 
pays for extras without a murmur. Bather likes 
music. Does not object to a flute and piano playing 
different tunes at the same time. He is not particular 
about his letters being opened. He can eat a cold 
dinner without salt, pepper, or mustard. He believes 
in " the cat." He knows nothing will " keep" in warm 
weather. He keeps a tea-caddy, but has lost the key. 
He never has his bed warmed. He is never in arrear 
with his rent : if it is not paid the very day it becomes 
due, the reason is because he has paid it the day 
before. The Model Lodger is single, but without 
friends, with very few knocks at the cloor; no Irish 
acquaintances ; does not know one medical student 
He is sheepish, rich, and contented. 




THE MODEL BEADLE. 




THE Model Beadle's 
strut is slow and ma- 
jestic, like a peacock's. 
You rarely see him run- 
ning, excepting when 
there is a very flagrant 
case of " owdacious wa- 
gabonds. " He is large, 
as if he lived on the fat of the 
Parish. He is good-tempered, ex- 
cepting during divine service, and 
then the smallest breach of etiquette 
makes him suddenly break out with 
a sort of Beadle-rash all over. His 
^A^ ^ anger, however, is like his cane : if 
^^V* ^s-^* it soon waxes warm, it soon cools 
~%S ^ • again. He wipes his steaming fore- 
head, crosses his legs, and is at 
peace once more with all the worlc 1 

The Model Beadle always looks contemplative. He 
seems as if his thoughts were fasting upon his dinner, 
or his muffins, or the bit of tripe that is waiting for 
him at home. His face is a rich larder of content. 
His lips are apparently imbued with a perpetual motion 
of eating and drinking. His eyes shine as with the 



76 THE MODEL BEADLE. 

lustre of soup. His cheeks are swollen like beefsteak 
puddings, as if they were the unctuous tombs of many 
rich things. His nose is a small station, buried 
between two high embankments of fat. How happy 
he looks ! He seems as if he had been born great, 
instead of having greatness only thrust upon him. 
You imagine he came into the world a Beadle, like 
Minerva, ready armed, with cocked hat and highlows, 
and that he cut his teeth with a Beadle's staff. 

Yet he is tender as he is great, like a prize ox. He 
conducts a donkey to the pound with the same gentle- 
ness that he holds a baby at the font. He will give 
away a bride, or stand godfather, merely for the asking. 
He is not proud, though he may look it. He will hold 
a silver plate at a oharity sermon, and put on a pair of 
Berlin gloves for the occasion. He will take a shilling, 
too, just as readily as the pew-opener. He is fond of 
sleep, but can keep his eyes open during an entire 
sermon — if it is the Bishop's. He is rarely upset, 
excepting by a bit of orange-peel, when his greatness 
feels the fall most heavily. But the flies annoy him the 
most in summer. On a hot day they stinrhim almost 
to madness. He rolls about on his seat as uneasy as a 
Frenchman on a steam-packet. He raises his mighty 
hand against them — the blow falls on his massive 
forehead, and resounds again, like hail against a 
window. His face vies in burning crimson with his 
cape ; but does a single murmer escape his lips ? 
No !-—he forgives, and builds himself up against a 
pillar for another snooze; till a'big bluebottle drives 



THE MODEL BEADLE. 77 

him into the churchyard for fresh air ; and there the 
invigorating sight of boys playing at leapfrog on a 
Sunday soon wakes him up, and the Beadle feels him- 
self again. 




Oil fpi, 
v* craft, e A vwimmn. D w 

HISTORICAL CARTOON, DISCOVERED ON TH6 WALLS OF A 
METROPOLITAN CHURCH. 

The Model Beadle does not make himself too 
cheap. He knows his sphere, and like a gold fish 
(that pictorial model of himself — vermilion turned up 
with gold) in a bowl, he has the sense to keep within 
it. He has the tenacity of ivy for the church. If he 
is not standing under the portico, basking in the sun, 
his legs astride like a full-dress Colossus, he is cooling 
himself in one of the free seats ; — if not in the vestry, 
tasting the wine, he is meditating amongst the tombs 



73 THE MODEL BEADLE. 

His reading takes in an extensive range of epitaphs. 
He wanders through a maze of granite virtues, and 
thinks in his heart the world is peopled, like a 
churchyard, with nothing but affectionate wives, 
deeply-lamented husbands, and inconsolable widows ; 
but is rather puzzled to think how folks can be so 
happy, since every one dies " universally regretted." 

The Beadle's amusements are limited. His notions 
of the funny are evidently buried in the grave. He 
is too dignified to laugh. As for dancing — you might 
as well expect St Paul's to do the egg-hornpipe. He 
lives by himself, within himself, for himself. He 
passes Punch and Judy without a pause, without a 
smile. Jack-in-the-Green makes him move down 
another street. Guy Faux is to him only a blaze of 
nonsense, though he looks more warmly upon that 
than anything else— for he has a suspicion that it is 
an institution in some way connected with the church. 
The Beadle in the drama of Punch in his horror; and 
he would certainly take him into custody, with the 
show, drum, pandean-pipes, and all, if he only dared. 
The Beadle may be the source of fun to others, but he 
has no appreciation of fun himself. Who ever saw a 
Beadle at a theatre? But he smiles, sometimes, 
when there is a christening of twins. 

He is not gregarious either. He is rarely 
seen with other Beadles. The sight of two Beadles 
would create astonishment — three together would 
cause a crowd. He mostly walks by himself, as if 
no one ought to divide the pavement with him. 



THE MODEL BEADLE. 79 

Watch him at the head of a charity procession-— or at 
a charity dinner — or when he is beating the bounds— 
or on a board day- — or on any grand or festive occasion 
— you will see he generally keeps himself to himself. 
Omnibusses, steamboats, or tea-gardens, rarely see him 
inside. It is the curse of Greatness to have no friends. 
The only occasion he mixes with human beings is 
on a "Dreadful conflagration." He puts himself then, 
without pride, at the head of the parish engine. He 
encourages the boys — he whips himself into a small 
canter — he stands out all the larger before a fire. 
He lights up with the flames. His consequence 
seems to expand, and his cocked hat to grow bigger, 
as the little regiment of ragamuffins ( with whom, on 
any other occasion, he would not march through 
Coventry Court) ioy fully cry, "Hoorah ! " Napoleon 
crossing the Bridge of Lodi was not more sublime 
than he is running up the door-steps to call upon the 
inhabitants within to surrender, or else they will be 
burnt to the ground. — By-the-by, has it ever been 
remarked that the costume of the Beadle is not at all 
unlike that of the Emperor ? The same cocked-hat 
exactly — the same coat and cape precisely. The 
parallel between the two might be carried further; but 
we are sure the Beadle would not like it. 

The Model Beadle loves a nosegay. He has a 
proud affection for his gold-lace, and keeps it as 
bright as his staff. Every one of his large buttons, 
too, is a mirror to shave in. His calves, somehow, 
always keep clean. Another of his peculiarities is the 



80 THE MODEL BEADLE. 

wiry straightness of his hair. Another oddity lurks in 
his eye — for it divides with Irish guns the faculty of 
shooting round the corner. It can scowl at a charity- 
boy two streets off. There is a doll-like cleanliness 
about him. His face shines like wax — no bit of straw, 
no stain, no speck of dirt, ever disfigures his purple 
face or fine linen. The dust, even, seems to respect 
him. He is so neat, you fancy he has just been taken 
out of a bandbox — though it must have been rather a 
large one to have contained him. 

He hates boys — charity -boys especially; but does 
not allow his anger to carry him away too far. He 
generallj r stops when he has lost his breath. This is 
the reason probably that the boys who are caught 
suffer for those who are not caught. It is false that 
he eats the oranges and apples he takes from them— 
he gives them to his children ; for the Beadle has a 
wife at home, who smoothes his ruffled brow, andirons 
his rumpled handkerchief, after the scuffles and the 
heats of the feverish day. He buries under his pillow 
all the stones and slights which his order has long re- 
ceived as a patrimony from the hands of Society ; and 
on his virtuous bed is wafted to the happy land of 
dreams — But stop, does the Beadle ever go to bed ? 
It is so hard to imagine a Beadle without his clothes. 
He must sleep in his cocked hat. 

Model Reader, do not despise the Beadle. For 
centuries he has been subjected to persecutions. Every 
Boy's hand is raised against him — every Man's nose is 
turned up at him. It is time the Beadle's Disabilities 



THE MODEL BEADLE. 



81 



were repealed, and the Pariah of the Parish was 
pressed to every one's bosom as a Man and a Brother. 
Be kind to him— listen to his poetry at Christmas, 
and give him half-a-crown. Do not invariably snub 
him when he serves you with a summons ; — offer him 
a trifle at Easter, when he collects the offerings ; — go 
up and exchange a few words with him when you 
meet him ; — ask him occasionally what he will have 
to drink — and it is astonish- 
ing the deal of gentleness 
you will find hidden in the 
austere nature of this paro- 
chial Dr. Johnson. All that 
glitters about the Beadle is 
not pride. Tear off the 
heavy coating of gold, and 
you will find the solid gin- 
gerbread of the man under- 
neath. Make an effort, and 
you cannot fail to love the _ 
Model Beadle. 







THE MODEL OMNIBUS CONDUCTOR. 

tit 




AN old cynic will say 
"Pooh! the race is ex- 
tremely rare — just as rare 
as a race between two 
'busses is frequent." Yet, 
there is such a being ! 
He gets to the Bank 
quicker than you can walk 
it. He wears worsted 
gloves, but no holes in 
the tips. He is acquaint- 
ed with the difference 
between Kensington and 
Kensington. He does not 
put old ladies into the 'bus 
first, and inquire where 
they are going to after- 
wards. Hecanstopata 
" public " on the roadside 
without having a pipe and a game of billiards . Hekeeps 
a good supply of coppers, and when he does give change 



THE MODEL OMNIBUS CONDUCTOR. 83 

for a sovereign there is not a bad sixpence in it. He re- 
spects the slender frames of bandboxes, and does not 
turn birdcages upside down. He hands in a dog or a 
baby without pinching either. He does not mind taking 
a gentleman's umbrella outside, and holding it over 
himself if it is very wet. He does not smoke in 
broad daylight, nor drink before dinner. He lets an 
old gentleman get off the steps before he says "All 
right." He allows no butcher boys to jump up be- 
hind. He uses the manual telegraph but slightly 
He never dances on his footboard, excepting it is the 
double shuffle in cold weather, to keep his feet warm. 
The only thing that tempts him off his bracket is a 
good slide in winter He does not know every house- 
maid that is making beds or cleaning windows along 
the road ; can pass a hearse without telling the driver 
to "look alive ; " nor is he particular in inquiring of 
every cabman with a white hat, whether he was the 
identical individual "vot stole the donkey?" He 
allows a lady an unlimited number of bundles and 
babies ; and, if it is raining cats and dogs (or mutton 
pies, as he calls it), de does not object — if the passen- 
gers do not — to a washerwoman taking her basket in- 
side. He can only count up to eighteen; all beyond 
that number he puts down, or else carries over to the 
next 'bus. He is only Minister of the Interior. The 
Exterior, viz., the box seat, is to him quite a Foreign 
Department, of which the driver only has the reins. 
But the roof of an omnibus is, like the deck of a steamer, 
built to hold any number, so he always has room for 



84 THE MODEL OMNIBUS CONDUCTOB. 

one outside. He is exceedingly gallant, and is always 
asking, "if any gentleman minds going on the roof, 
just to oblige a lady." His badge is so bright 
it shines like a medal of good conduct. He wears it 
proudly on his breast, like a lady's locket. He is free 
from that other badge of his order — imposition. If 
the price is threepence, he does not take you a kerb- 
stone further to space it into sixpence. He does not 
extort a shilling under the mean pretext that it is Sun- 
day. He is sparing in his dialogue with " Bill " (all 
drivers' names are Bill) touching what he did 
last night at the "Heagle." He is too gentlemanly to 
pull a lady's boa to pieces, or to struggle for half a 
shawl ; but if he is contending with a refractory rival 
for the possession of a fare, his great coup de main 
always is to ran off with the baby and put it inside his 
'bus, and gallop on. The result invariably proves his 
elegant prediction —"that it must be a precious bad 
cow that will not follow its calf," for the next moment 
there is an agonizing cry of " Stop " and sure enough 
it is the panting mother shouting to the conductor* 
like the witches in Macbeth, "Hail I all hail ! " This 
only proves his love for children. You seldom see him 
peeling a hot potato on his pedestal, though it is a luxury 
he is very fond of, as proved by his never reaching the 
end of a journey without tossing for one. He is above 
fear, and only laughs when a ' bus behind tries to stir 
him up with its long pole. He does not climb on to 
the roof when a big black bull sniffs the straw on which 
he is standing. He is above cruelty, and jumps as quick 



THE MODEL OMNIBUS CONDUCTOR. 



85 



as a lightning conductor to help an old woman whose 
apple-stall has been knocked over by "too close a 
shave" of the wheel. He knows his station, and holds 
discourse with no smart cook that is sitting next the 
door, and was never known to lie down on the plush 
cushions, excepting it was the last 'bus home, and it 
was pitch dark, and there was not a "Hangel," or a 
" Goat in Boots" left inside. 

Such is the Model Omnibus Conductor*— without 
pain t, without varnish,with out " chaff," that ill-grain- 
ed commodity which his fellow badgers generally "sow 
broadcast" through the streets of London. He knows 
perfectly well that where there is chaff there must be 
thrashing, and, as he is not anxious to bring this about 
his ears, he leaves those green fields to be taken up 
with the " rigs' 'of others. Such is his lofty career — he 
shuts his door against no man — his hand is held out 
to the richest and the 
poorest. If you have 
dropped a sixpence 
in the straw, he will 
bring a light and look 
for it. If you are < 
wise, you will take 
his number, for you 
may spend a whole 
fortune in omni- 
busses before you 
will meet with an- 
other Model Om- 
nibus Conductor P 




A SMALL GKOUP OF MODELS. 




< 



WHE Model Pet Parson has the 

most beautiful black hair, and the 
prettiest loves of whi sker s . He attendp 
-tea and whist parties, and preaches in 
canary-coloured kid gloves, with the 
most dazzling diamond outside his little finger. He 
has the smallest fashionable lisp in the world. He is 
highly eau-de-Cologned. His handkerchief is of the 
purest cambric — a perfect cobweb, edged with lace. He 
is never without a "nervous headache. " He is very 
delicate, poor fellow ! He lives on cold chicken and 
white wine whey. He rides to church in a lady's car- 
riage. He is supported by the voluntary contributions 
of the young ladies of the neighbourhood, and has 
embroidered braces sufficient to stock the whole of the 
Highlands. Hassocks, too, book-marks and covers, 
orange marmalade, calf's-foot jelly, grapes, game, 
tea-cakes, and sweet-breads, of all varieties, are left 
"for his kind acceptance" every day. He collects 
pennies for converted washerwomen. He and the 
Duke of Wellington have married more " lovely brides ' ' 
than the wholg Church. His dress is profound black, 



A SMALL GROUP OF MODELS. 87 

relieved with liberal wristbands, and a shirt-front 
that sticks out like the paper ornament of a fire-grate. 
When he gets preferment to a more fashionable church* 
a magnificent silver teapot is presented to him by the 
ladies, with a beautiful purse full of new sovereigns. 
With the purity of his white neckcloth, the Pet Par- 
son is sure of a rich wife, and innumerable legacies- 

The Model Actor speaks the words of Shake- 
spere in preference to his own. He is free from the 
theatrical superstition that genius is found at the bot- 
tom of a brandy bottle. He estimates talent at a 
higher measurement than the letters in the play-bills. 
He is not inflated with the belief that he ought to act 
Macbeth every night. In going through his lines he 
in not continually falling over a "Ha-ha ! " nor does 
he embroider all his sentences with a running" Hem ! " 
He does not appeal to the "skey," or his "kynd" 
friends. He refuses to appear in low neck, bare arms, 
and woman's clothes, thinking that an actor always 
studies his character best when he is acting the part 
of a gentleman. 

The Model Barrister returns his fees, let them 
be ever so large, when he has not been able to attend 
to his Brief. 

The Model Premier. — No such person ever 
known. 

The Model Bore. — You're another. 

The Model Donkey. — He is to be heard of in 
the House of Commons. 

The Model Cousin. — The Servant's Best Friend. 



88 



A SMALL GROUP OF MODELS. 



The Model Beggar. — For list of candidates, see 
the Pension List. 

The Model Quack does not take his own medi- 
cine — only writes the testimonials. 

The Model Humbug — The claims are too nume- 
rous to decide. 

The Model Cabman keeps his temper if offered an 
eightpenny fare. 

The Model Doctor can go to church without 
being called out in the middle of the service. 

The Model Manager. — You had better inquire of 
the Drury Lane Committee ; or a shorter cut probably 
will be to go at once to the Insolvent Debtors' Court. 
Search till you succeed. 

The Model Author. — Ask the first author ycu 
meet, and there cannot be a doubt about it. 

The Model Publisher.— Vide our title-page. 





• His 'prentice nan' he tried on Ma 
And then he did the Lasses, O ! " 



OUR MUSEUM OF MODEL WOMEN 
AND CHILDREN, 



Dedication 


• ' 






> 


, 


V 


The Model Sister . * 


• 


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, 


• 


► 


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„ Wife 


; 


• 


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• 


• 


3 


„ Mother-in-Law 


* 


• 


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4 


p Mother . 


• 






• 


• 


15 


v Spoilt Boy * 


• 


• 




• 




SO 



iT 


OUR MUSEUM OF MODEL WOMEN, ETC, 


PAGE 


The Model Baby 




. 24 


•» 


Monthly Nurse • 




<i7 


* 


Governess « « « 




,5 


t 


Daughter . . • , • • 




39 


n 


Lodging-house Keeper • • 




43 


X 


Tiger 




48 


»» 


Fast Lady , 




51 


ri 


Actress . 




59 


t* 


Houses • . 4 




65 


M 


Genius • ; 




67 


»» 


Widow . . . • 




7\ 


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Young Lady . . . • 




>5 


t» 


Maid-of-all-Work • < • 




, «& 


ft 


Milliner •••'-» 




S» 




^TODEL WOMEN AND CHILDREN 




THE MODEL SISTER. 

•THERE is cne in every home; the very worst 
■*■ brother that ever refused to take his sisters out 
walking, must recollect a Model Sister. 

It was she who mended all his gloves, and used to 
practice waltzing with him in the drawing-room, and 



f THE MODEL SISTER 

.an over " The Maid of Langollen," at least fifty times, 
before he caught the right air. 

It was she who was the confidant of all his boyish 
loves, and wrote his first attempts at love-letters, and 
curled his hair, when he wanted to be " very smart." 

It was she who always ran and opened the door 
for him when it was raining, and fetched whatever he 
wanted out of his bed-room, and always had " some 
silver" when he was going out, and was positive " she 
could spare it." These loans occurred pretty often, 
and yet did she ever allude to them, or get tired of 
lending? Brothers have short memories — but you 
know it was a fact. 

If " papa was angry at your being out so late, ' 
wasn't she in the passage to warn you, and to ask 
you "how you could be so foolish?" If she was 
fearful of a disturbance, did n't she wait outside, and 
rush in, and, with her arms round her father's neck, 
beg of him " not to speak so harsh to you?" If she 
knew you had no dinner, wasn't the cloth always 
laid for you in a private room; whilst, by some 
means, she got you a glass of wine, and came in and 
out to see if there was anything you wanted ? Again, 
if you had been " out," and complained of being 
hungry, did n't she steal down stairs, and, when they 
were all in bed, smuggle a tray of cold meat into 
your room, and never forgot the pickles? And if 
any harsh voice called out loudly, " Who 's that up 
stairs?" didn't she put her hand over your mouth, 
and call out, " It's only me, papa?" 

Besides, who in illness nursed you? Who was it 



THE MODEL SISTER. 3 

that brought you up your tea, and gave you your 
medicine, and would tempt you with delicate pud- 
dings, sago, and "such nice water-gruel," and would 
sit up with you all night, and bathe your temples, and 
kiss you, and be on her feet if you only turned, and 
ask you a thousand times if you felt better, and half- 
crying call you "dear brother" — words, you know, 
that never sound so touching as in a sick room. More 
than this, have you no recollection when you were 
very, very ill, waking up and finding her kneeling at 
your bedside? You have felt this — you must — every 
one has — and you have loved her with all your soul, 
though perhaps you were too weak at the time to say 
it. She was always kind — always repaying a brother's 
roughness with a sister's gentleness— and thinking 
nerself more than rewarded if you only walked out 
with her, or spared an evening, not more than one in 
the whole year, to take her to the theatre. How 
grateful she was, too, if you read to her of an evening, 
whilst she was working — knitting, probably, a beautiful 
steel purse, the destination of which was only learnt 
on your next birthday ! You have not forgotten either 
her coming to see you at school, and bringing you 
large bags of ginger-bread and oranges, and a plum- 
cake made with her own hands; and her walking with 
you, hand in hand, round the play-ground, or through 
the neighbouring flelds,making you all the while display, 
by her affectionate questions, your wonderful store of 
half-year's learning, whilst mamma listened and ad- 
mired by your happy side? Who was it, too, that 
attended to your linen both when you were a boy, and 



4 THE MODEL SISTER. 

when you were at that neutral age, vibrating between 
manhood and childhood, which is called (no one can 
tell why) hobbedehoyhood ; and, when asked, replaced 
all stray buttons, sewed missing strings on to collars, 
hemmed your scarfs, was the first to teach you the 
difficult art of tying your neck handkerchief, trimmed 
your nails, packed your box when you were going 
anywhere, and even accompanied you, taking courage 
from your own cowardice, to the dentist's? Who was 
the companion of all your romps, and used to pull 
your sprouting whiskers, and make you quizzical pre- 
sents of bear's grease, and bring you home all the 
fine things she had heard the young ladies say about 
her "darling brother?" Who ever took such pains 
to make that "darling brother " smart, or admired 
him more, and danced only with him when she 
would n't dance with anybody else ? And when there 
was " a little disagreement " at home, and you were 
hiding in a garret, nursing your pride, which had 
been hurt by some hard word, or trying to cure 
your young-man's dignity that had been sadly wounded 
by an angry blow, who came to see you oftener, 
bringing you always " a few things that mother had 
put up for you," and, by her kindness, gradually led 
you home, where she knew too well your father was 
only waiting to receive you with open arms? You 
were angry at the time with the artifice, but soon lost 
your anger in the depths of your affection, and the 
quick joy of the reconciliation. Who did all this? 
You must remember — if ever you had a childhood — 
your heart tells you it was your sister. If not sen 



THE MODEL SISTER. 



sible, then,, of all the love which was heing daily 
forced with such mildness on you, you must feel it now, 
and will turn back with me, and, in your brother's 
heart, tiy to thank, as I now thank, with a life's 
l*rnt-up gratitude, that Model Sister, 




THE MODEL WIFE. 




HE never comes down 
to breakfast in curl- 
papers. She does not 
grumble if her hus- 
band brings a friend 
x^ home to dinner, even 
if " there is nothing 
in the house." She 
does not remonstrate 
if her husband puts 
his feet on the steel 
fender, or cry if he 
does not wipe his 
boots on the door- 
mat. She subscribes 
to no circulating 
library, and if she reads a novel, she falls asleep over 
it. She is proficient in pies, and has a deep knowledge 
of puddings. She never talks politics ; or " wish that 
she were dead," or " a man ;" or slam the doors, or 
shut herself up in her bed-room on the plea of a 
" nervous headache." She is very slow in tears, and 
a stout heretic as to hysterics. She allows a dog to 
be kept in the house. She goes to church, but not to 
criticise the bonnets. She is not above descending 
into the kitchen to get il something warm" for supper 



THE MODEL WIFE. 7 

She alld$s a fire in the bed-room on a wintry night. 
She has a quick eye for dust, but does not martyr her 
husband with continual complaints about the servants, 
nor worry herself to death for a man in livery, or a 
page in buttons. She can walk, and without thin 
shoes, or a Jeames to follow her. She prefers table- 
beer to wine, and does not faint at the idea of grog, or 
in fact, faint at all. She never sees that it is necessary 
to go out of town " for the dear children's health." It 
is true she follows the fashions ; but then it is at several 
years' distance. She has the smallest possible affec- 
tion for jewellery, and makes the sweet children's 
frocks out of her old dresses. She is never " delicate," 
and would scorn to send for the doctor because she is 
" a little low." She never tells her husband when any 
of her friends have got a new bonnet, or exclaims with 
enthusiasm that she saw " such a lovely Cachemere in 
the City yesterday," and then rhapsodise on the small 
ness of the price. She never opens her husband's 
letters; and preserves her wedding-gown with a girlish 
reverence. She is not miserable if she stays in town 
on the Ascot day, nor does penance in the back parlour 
if she does not go out of town when the season is 
over. She mends stockings, and makes unexcep- 
tionable preserves and pickles. She does not refuse 
to go out with her husband because she hasn't a good 
gown. She asks for money sparingly, and would 
sooner " eat her head off" than make anything out 
of the housekeeping. She always dresses for dinner. 
She never hides the latch-key. She rarely flirts, and 
it makes her too giddy to waltz, even with an officer. 



8 



THE I ODEL WIFE 



The Model Wife always sits up for her husband, to 
the most unmatrimonial hours ; and still she does not 
look black, or say "He's killing her," though he should 
bring daylight in with him, or even come home with 
the ''milk." She hangs over the little bit of fire, 
watching the mantelpiece clock, alarmed by every 
sound, jumping up at every cab, shivering and sleepy, 
her only companions during the long night the mice 
in the cupboard, of a stray blackbeetle, and her only 
occupation the restless fear lest her husband should 
not come home safe. She cries sometimes, but never 
before him ; and, above all — hear it, all ye Wives of 
England — she does not Caudle Lecture him when she 
gets him inside the curtains and knows there is no 
escape for him ! 





THE 




THE MODEL MOTHER-IN-LAW 

9 HE is a tender creature, and requires 
the nicest care and the hottest 
luncheons to keep her in good tem- 
per. She has only one child, a 
daughter, but she is passionately 
fond of her. She "only lives to 
see the dear thing happy" — and 
everybody else miserable. To in- 
sure this, it is necessary to be con- 
stantly with her. Accordingly, she 
11 brings her things" some day before dinner, and takes 
possession of the best bedroom, only to stop ior a 
week. Her weeks, however, never have a Saturday. 
She has no knowledge of time as measured by the 
week, month, or year, but is sadly put out if supper is 
not brought up precisely to the minute. But Julia 
tlways required a mother's care. She was very delicate 
even as a child, and the little thing is far from strong 
Jiow. She has never left her side for two days together 
lince the hour she was born. Her daughter must not 
walk. — " Do you hear me, Julia? I will not allow it; 
the exertion is too much for you, aod cabs are cheap 
enough, goodness knows ! You mu^ not exert your- 
self, child ; so give me the keys, and I '11 attend to the 
housekeeping for you." 



10 THE MODEL MOTHER-IN-LAW 

The shopping is attended to from the same generous 
motive. The tradesmen soon look up to the Mother- 
in Law as the mistress of the house, and it is not long 
before the servants are made to acknowledge her sway, 
and come to her regularly for orders. The husband 
is nobody — a creature to give money as it is wanted, 
and to hold his tongue. If he ventures to remonstrate, 
he is " killing" her daughter ; and as a mother, she is 
not going to allow the murder of her darling child 
before her own eyes and not tell him what she thinks 
about it. He is reminded every day that " he little 
knows the treasure he possesses in that dear creature ;" 
and if he hints anything about the creature costing 
him rather dear for a " treasure," he is asked if he 
cal)s himself a man? If poor Julia has a headache, 
the husband is blamed for it. It 's all his doing; he 
knows it is. Didn't he speak harshly to her at break 
fast ? If the dinner is badly cooked, he must not say 
a word, for the tears immediately flow, and the mother 
quickly upbraids him as a wretch who ought to be 
ashamed of himself for speaking in that way to a 
suffering woman. If he refuses to go on the continent, 
"his motive is very clear; but let the crime be upon 
his own head ! She would not have his feelings after- 
wards for a thousand pounds !" If he grumbles aoout 
any extravagant outlay, she is not going to allow her 
daughter to starve for the consideration of a penny. 
She tells him he is hilling her ; and if the new curtains 
are not instantly put up in the drawing-room, she will 
not answer for the consequences ! She should like 
very much to know what he calls himself? 



THE MODEL MOTHER-IN-LAW. ]1 

The Model Mother-in-Law, in her kindest mood, is 
fearful, but she is most despotic when there has been 
a settlement made upon her daughter. The domestic 
tyrant then rules with the iron rolling-pin of a female 
Nero. All the little attempts of the poor husband to 
maintain his rights are loudly anathematised as " base 
machinations to secure her poor daughter's property 
He wishes to drive Julia mad, but she sees through 
his mean devices ! " Letters too are rifled for secrets 
— pockets ransacked for billet-doux, old servants dis 
missed, new ones hired, the dinner hour altered, the 
luncheon kept on the table all day, and the children 
brought home from school, just as Mrs. Spitfire 
pleases. The house is quite a family Bastile. No 
one dares move out or come in without her permission. 
The latch-key is surrendered, and the husband is quite 
under the Mother-in-Law's surveillance, and is only 
let out upon parole. Woe to him if he returns home 
a minute late ! He is asked through the keyhole "if 
he's not ashamed of himself?" and before he has 
wiped his feet on the door-mat, he is told, loud enough 
for all the servants to hear it, that " Julia is deter- 
mined not to endure his abominable profligacy any 
longer, — the poor thing is sinking fast Into a prema- 
ture grave, and she is resolved upon having a separate 
establishment." The next morning the Mother-in- 
Law and her daughter leave with a hundred band- 
boxes, and the husband is left alone without as much 
as the key of the tea-caddy to console himself with. 
But he is not allowed to enjoy his solitude long. A 
St Swithin of letters keeps pouring in upon him from 
B 



12 THE MODEL MOTHER-IN-LAW 

the mother, in the name of her injured daughter, 
reproaching him with everything short of arson. He 
is visited at length hy his dread enemy even in person, 
and after an hydraulic scene, made more terrihie hy 
the threat that "she will never leave him till she has 
brought him to a sense of the injuries he has inflicted 
upon that sainted creature," he is obliged to capitulate : 
he falls upon his knees before his wife, and begs to be 
forgiven. The Mother-in-Law stands by, like a stern 
Nemesis of the sex, and will not allow the poor 
culprit to rise before he has confessed over and over 
again how deeply he was in the wrong, and "what an 
infamous wretch he must have been ever to doubt 
such angelic goodness ! " 

The husband's children belong, properly speaking, 
to the Model Mother-in-Law. She superintends 
their education, dresses them, whips them, physics 
them, and does whatever she pleases with them. She 
begs " he '11 not interfere in matters he cannot possibly 
understand." It is at the advent of a new baby, how- 
ever, that her tyrannic power is the most absolute ; 
the whole household then, from kitchen to garret, is 
under her thumb, and, the centre of a large circle of 
Godfreys, Gamps, Prigs, and Dalbys, she administers 
elixirs and commands alternately, which no one dares 
disobey. The doctor even succumbs to her ; and as for 
the poor husband, he sinks to the smallest possible 
point of virile insignificance. He rings the bell — no 
one answers it : he wanders about a miserable Peter 
Schlemhil in his own house, a husband who has 
lost even the shadow of authority. He asks for his 



THE MODEL MOTHER-IN-LAW. 13 

dinner, not a soul knows anything about it. A bed is 
fitted up for him somewhere in a lumber-room at the 
top of the nursery. He asks to see his wife, but is 
met by the Mother-in-Law at the door, and questioned 
if " the man really wishes to kill his innocent babe and 
wife ? " He is " the man." 

The Model Mother-in-Law is essentially a 
" strong-minded woman." She is always telling 
people "a bit of her mind." The husband gets a 
bit every day. All his relations, too, who dare " to 
put their noses into what does not concern them," are 
favoured with " a bit" — a good large bit— also. Her 
"mind," like the bell of St. Sepulchre, is never told, 
unless it is the prelude to some dreadful execution. 
She dearly loves a quiet family. 

The Model Mother-in-Law makes a principle of 
residing with her victims. When once in a house, 
she is as difficult to get out as the dry-rot, and if 
allowed her own way, soon undermines everything, 
and brings the house " in no time " about everybody's 
ears. She goes out of town with them as regularly as 
the autumn. She should never forgive herself if any- 
thing happened when she was away, and she was not 
by the side of her dearest Julia to aid and comfort 
her. The husband's comfort is never considered. If 
he does succeed in driving her out of the house, his 
torments are by no means at an end, for the chances 
are that she takes a lodging in the same street, and 
lives right opposite to him. Then she amuses herseU 
by running backwards and forwards all day, dropping 
in to dinner or luncheon about six times a-week, or 



14 THE MODEL MOTHER-IN-LAW 

else watching every thing that takes place in his house 
from over the window-blinds of her " first pair front." 
His only escape, then, is in establishing a Society for 
the Promotion of Emigration from England of all 
homeless Mothers-in-Law who have only one daughter. 
If this should be fruitless, his only hope is in procuring 
a law to annul all marriages where the husband can 
prove that he has married " a treasure of a daughter," 
who has a "jewel of a mother." If this remedy even 
should fail, he had better take a couple of Life Pills, 
for there is assuredly " no rest but the grave" for the 
husoand who groans under a Model Mother-in-Law 





THE MODEL MOTHER 




HE knows no children like her own; 
they are all angels. 
Tom can already 
spell words of three 
syllables, and the 
little fellow is only 
five years old next 
thirty-first of July 
Polly puts such cu- 
rious questions, that 
her papa is often 
puzzled to answer 
them. It was but 
yesterday she asked 
him "Why he had 
whiskers, and mamma had none?" and Mr. Smith 
really didn't know what to say Thank good- 
ness ! she has given all of them a good education, and 
there isn't one that can turn round and reproach her 
with a moment's neglect. She loves them all dearly, 
and never ceases thinking of them. It does her heart 
good to see them happy, and she cannot understand 
how mothers can part with their children, and put 
them out to nurse, where they never see them, and 
leave them entirely to the care of a strange woman. 



16 THE MODEL MOTHER 

No wonder their children don't love them ! Now, 
she has nursed every one of her family, and is she any 
the worse for it, pray ? She has no patience with such 
fine ladies. They don't deserve having children. 
Why, look at hahy ! The little thing knows her, and 
understands every word she says. If it cries — though 
it is the quietest child in the world — she has only to 
say " Be quiet, baby!" and off it goes to sleep 
directly. No! those who don't behave as mothers, 
will never be loved as mothers, and it's her opinion 
that when children turn out bad, it is because they 
have been neglected in their childhood, and have never 
known the comforts of a home. Ingratitude never 
grows up in a child's heart, unless it has been first 
sown there by the hand of the parent. Why she has 
never had a moment's uneasiness with any one of her 
children — and she has ten of them, — and why? 
Because affection begets affection, and she is positive 
they would not do a single thing to make their mother 
miserable. It's true that Ned is " a b'ttle raeketty," 
but boys will be boys, and the lad is too good at heart 
ever to go wrong. But if the worst should happen — 
not that she fears it — the boy never will forget his 
happy infancy, and that's a blessing ! The thoughts 
of a happy childhood has brought back many a prodi- 
gal son, and she knows well enough that her Ned would 
never wander far without feeling that chain round his 
heart gently pulling him towards home. But it's all 
nonsense! The boy's right enough, if Mr. Smith 
wouldn't be so harsh to him! 

Thus the Model Mother defends her children. 



THE MODEL MOTHER. 17 

Their defects are beauties in her eyes : their veiy faults 
are dear to her. They can do no wrong. If any break- 
age takes place, it wasn't the child's fault ; she tells 
you she 's only to blame. She stays the father's arm 
when his anger is about to fall, and stops his voice 
when his paternal passion is rising. If any of the 
boys have gone to the theatre, she sits up to let them 
in. When questioned the next morning as to the hou. 
they came home, she has forgotten everything about 
it — all she recollects is, that young Tom ate a tremen- 
dous supper. She supplies them with money, and, if 
her good-nature is laughed at, she asks you, pray to 
inform her " when lads are to enjoy themselves, if 
not when they are young?" She is continually 
sending presents to Eliza, who, " poor thing! did not 
many so well as her sisters." She is not afraid of 
taking her daughters out with her, for fear of their age 
leading to the confession of her own, nor does she 
dress like a young lady of sixteen, in order to look 
younger than they. To tell the truth, she carries her 
family everywhere. The youngest she takes to the 
theatre ; on a Sunday they all go out together ; she 
will not travel, or stir out of town, without the whole 
troop, or call on an acquaintance "just in a friendly 
way to take dinner," without having Julia, and Jackey, 
and Emmy, and Augustus, and ever so many more with 
her. She imagines that because she dearly loves her 
children, every one must dearly love them also. She 
discourses on their talents for hours — the reading of 
the one, the sewing of the other, the blue eyes of the 
third, the superior accomplishments of the eldest, the 



18 THE MODEL MOTHER. 

wonderful "Busy, Busy Bee" of the youngest — and 
tells wonderful anecdotes that prove them to be the 
greatest geniuses that ever wore pinafores. She makes 
plum-cakes for the boys when at school, and has them 
home on the Saturday, and every possible holiday, 
though she's told each time, "that it interferes sadly 
with their studies." 

The Model Mother % is happiest, however, at a 
wedding. She runs about, kisses her daughter every 
time she meets her, looks after the breakfast, puts all 
sorts of packages into the travelling carriage, runs up 
and down stairs for no one knows what, and laughs 
and cries every alternate minute. She never was so 
happy ; and when her darling girl says, " Good-bye, 
mother," she throws her arms round her neck and 
wishes her all the happiness in the world, accompanied 
with a hope that " she never will forget her dear 
mother," and that "she knows where there is al- 
ways a home for her." Her joy, too, at the birth 
of the first child is only equalled by her pride and 
importance. She never leaves her "pet's" bedside, 
and stops to comfort her, and be the first to kiss the 
baby She attends every christening, and nearly ruins 
herself in presents to the nurses, and coral necklaces, 
and magnificent bibs and tuckers. At Christmas she 
has all her children to dine with her; it has been the 
practice of the family as long as she can recollect, and 
if there is a daughter abroad, or a son in disgrace no 
one exactly knows where, she is the first to call recol- 
lection to the fact, and to propose the health of the 
missing one after dinner, joined with the prayer that 



THE MODEL MOTHER. 



19 



he or she il may soon be among them again." In the 
evening she arranges the romps for the boys and 
girls, and is not the least offended if any one calls her 
"grandmother." Little presents are given, forfeits are 
played, glasses of weak negus are handed round, and 
a Happy Christmas is drank to all. Sir Koger de 
Coverley finishes the amusements, in which she leads 
off the dan* e with her husband, after dragging him 
away from the whist-table, and she keeps up the fun 
as long as anybody. At last it is getting late ; her 
children crowd round her, they kiss her, and hang 
about her, and there is nothing but one loud " God 
bless you, mother!" heard on all sides. This wish 
springs from the heart of every one, for there is not a 
child but who has felt, in sickness as in health, in ad- 
versity as in prosperity, abroad or at home, the lore 
and kindness of the Model Mother. 




TUK MODEL SPOILT BOY 



fE will do as 
he likes. He 
will dirty his 
clothes, he will 
tear his trow- 
sers, he will 
hreak the win- 
dows, and no 
one shall pre- 
vent him. He 
cares nothing 
for nohody — 
not he ; and he 
will cry if he 
chooses. He 's 
not going to 
school; he hates 
it, and he does 
not care if he 's 
a dunce. Ma* 
said he was n't 
to learn if it gave him a weadache. He likes playing 
best, and only wishes he was a king, he would eat suet 
lots of buns all day. Do you like ginger-beer? — he doea. 




THE MODEL SPOILT BOY. 21 

The servants are nasty creatures — that they are ; and 
hell tell his mamma that they struck him, and won't 
they just catch it ! He does not care if it is " a story." 
Where does he expect to go to ? He knows well 
enough, but he's not going to tell you — it 's so jolly 
likely. His papa is much richer than your's. Won't 
you give him a shilling ? You won't? Well, you 're 
a nasty, stingy man, and Ma' said you 'd a big nose, 
and that you only came to dinner. Oh, yes ! you 'd 
better strike him; he kicked nurse yesterday — he 
should like to see you do it. Isn't it plummy catching 
flies and putting 'em inside a watch ?— he's done it 
over and over again — it 's such fun ! Have yon ever 
stuck cockchafers ? Crikey ! isn't it a lark just giving 
'em paper tails, and set 'em* flying in church ? He 
and Harry Simmonds melted Polly's doll yesterday 
before the fire — there isn't a bit of the head and 
shoulders left now. He is n't a naughty boy — he will 
scream. Ma' says she 'd eat herself if she was half as 
ugly as you. He wont take any medicine — he does 
not care if he does die. It's precious nasty stuff— ah, 
he's glad he's broken the bottle He'li tell you a 
secret if you won't tell : Aunt Jane wears a wig— Pa* 
and Ma' quarrel so sometimes; Ma' says Pa" s a brute, 
and then Pa' calls Ma* a " big millstone round his 
neck." He didn't steal the fruit — he only took a 
napple, and two pears, and a norange, and a wandful 
of nuts — that's all. He won't be a good boy. He 
won't let go your whiskers. If you'll give him a 
shilling, p Yaps he will. He won't go to bed. Ma' lets 
Vim sit up as long as he likes. He will stamp. He 



22 THE MODEL SPOILT BOY 

won't leave go of the table-cloth — no, he won't. He 
doesn't care if he does pull all the tea-things over. 
Ugh ! ugh ! ugh ! he '11 tell his Ma' ! Ugh !— you 'd 
better not hit him again, or he 11 be ill and die of the 
measles — that he will. Booh-ugh-ooh ! — he T s jolly 
glad he 's spilt the tea-urn — he '11 do it every day, if 
you don't leave him alone. You 're a nasty beast — 
u-u-u-gh — that you are, 

The Model Spoilt Boy is carried off at last, amidst 
a chorus of his own screams, but not before he has 
upset several cups and saucers, and distributed his 
kicks very impartially all round. The screams are 
continued up-stairs, and prolonged under the bed 
clothes, till he falls asleep — the only period he is 
ever quiet. The next day his " Pa' " determines to 
send him to school. " Ma"' opposes, and her pet child 
resists ; several broken windows attest the fury of the 
struggle ; but for once the maternal authority is over- 
powered. The young Nero of the nursery is packed off 
into the countiy. When he comes home for the holi- 
days, he is wonderfully tamed ; but it takes several 
half-years thoroughly to eradicate his profound savage- 
ness, and to make of him a sweet child that foregoes 
his natural love for teazing the cat, and worrying the 
servants, and breaking the windows, and putting gun- 
powder into the snuffers, and wiping his dirty hands 
on gentlemen's trowsers. Sometimes he's cured of 
screaming, but is troubled with dreadful fits of sulk- 
ing, that will continue for days together, as if it were 
his only consolation for no longer pinching his little 



THE MODEL SPOILT BOY. 



23 



.brothers and sisters, or running pins into the little 
baby, or giving bluebottles a watery grave in the milk- 
jug. These sulks may, with care and a strong hand, 
be weeded from his barren disposition, but generally 
they lie, with his other faults, far too deep to be rooted 
out; and as the Child is the reputed Father to the Man, 
so a despotic husband, or a tyrannic parent, is only too 
frequently the son of the Model Spoilt Bot. 




1 % HE MODEL BABY. 




is the image of its father, 
unless it is the very pic- 
ture of its mother. It is 
H the best tempered little 
|= thing in the world, never 
crying hut in the middle 
of the night, or screaming 
hut when it is being wash 
ed. It is astonishing how 
quiet it is whilst feeding. 
It understands every- 
thing, and proves its love - 
for learning by tearing 
the leaves out of every 
book, and grasping with 
both hands at the engra- 
vings. It is the cleverest 
child that was ever born, and says "papa," or some- 
thing very like it, when scarcely a month old. It 
takes early to pulling whiskers, preferring those of 
strangers. It has only one complaint, and that is the 
wind ; but it is frequently troubled with it. It is the 
most wonderful child that was ever seen, and would 




THE M@@ES- 1A®V 



THE MODEL BABY. 25 

swallow both its tiny fists, if it was not for a habit of 
choking. It dislikes leaving home, rarely stopping 
on a visit longer than a day. It has a strange hostility 
for its nurse's cap and nose, which it will clutch and 
hold with savage tenacity, if in the least offended. It 
is never happy but in its mother's arms, especially if 
it is being nursed by a gentleman. It prefers the 
floor to the cradle, which it never stops in longer than 
it can help. It is very playful, delighting in pulling 
the table-cloth cff, or knocking the china ornaments 
off the mantelpiece, or upsetting its food on some- 
body's lap. It invents a new language of its own, 
almost before it can speak, which is perfectly intelligi- 
ble to its parents, though Greek to every one else. It 
is not fond of public entertainments, invariably crying 
before it has been at one five minutes. It dislikes 
treachery in any shape, and repels the spoonful of 
sugar if it fancies there is a powder at the bottom of 
it. Medicine is its greatest horror, next to cold water. 
It has no particular love for dress, generally tearing 
to pieces any handsome piece of finery, lace especially, 
as soon as it is put on. It inquires deeply into every- 
thing, and is very penetrating in the construction of a 
drum, the economy of a work-box, or the anatomy of 
a doll, which it likes all the better without any head 
or arms. It has an intuitive hatred of a doctor, and 
fights with all its legs, and hands, and first teeth, 
against his endearments. It has a most extraordinary 
taste for colours, imbibing them greedily in every 
shape, more especially from the wooden tenants of 
Noah's Ark, which are to be found in the mouth of 



26 



THE MODEL BABY 



every baby. In fact, there never was a child like it, 
and the Model Baby proves this by surviving the 
thousand-and-one experiments of rival grannies and 
mothers-in-law, and outliving, to the athletic age of 
kilts and bare legs, the villanous compounds of 
Godfrey and Dalby, and the whole poison-chest of 
Elixirs, Carminatives, and Cordials, winch babies are 
physically heir to 




TIIE MODEL MONTHLY NURSE. 




HE is opposed breath 
and body to chloro- 
form. Ether, too, 
is an abomination 
in her eyes. She 
considers both the 
one and the other 
were invented to 
take the bread out 
of her mouth. She 
hates all " new- 
fangled ways. ' ' But 
she does not oppose 
the Doctor — she 
only does as she 
likes. It is always 
"our patient," and 
" we 're getting on 
wonderful well, but 
extremely delicate, 
Doctor." To in- 
quiries, however, 
from the street 
door, it is never 



28 THE MODEL MONTHLY NURSE 

more than "as well as can be expected." The 
bulletin of the most Model Monthly Nurse never 
was more sanguine than that. Her expectations, 
in fact, are very moderate. She does not expect 
to stop longer than the month. She expects 
three meals a-day, and a glass of something warm 
before going to bed— or to sleep, rather. She expects 
to have one servant to wait upon her, and to have the 
bell answered the first time she rings it. She expects 
to have warm water kept for her all day and night 
She expects half-a-crown at least from carriage ac- 
quaintances, something large from " the dear lady's" 
father and mother, but not more than a shilling from 
poor relations. But she gives caudle and curtseys to 
all. She is above standing at the door, with her hand 
hollowed out, like a pew-opener. Here her expecta- 
tions end — they finish at the threshold of the bed-room 
door, excepting when her reign is over (like a maga- 
zine, it rarely goes beyond the month), and then she 
does expect something over and above her wages from 
" master," and a shawl, at least, from her " dear lady. 
She expects, also, plenty of porter for dinner, and a 
pint for luncheon. She has such a "weak digester." 
The Model Nurse is most punctual to her time ; 
rather the day before than after. She is never idle 
She cuts up an old glove for the door-knocker. She 
has quite a stud of horses ready aired with linen for 
"the dear little poppet." She has taken off her 
goloshes, hung up her pattens, and put on her list 
slippers Her big nightcap lies ready for action. 
She is quite breathless. She only leaves the bedside 



THE MODEL MONTHLY NURSE. 29 

upon the greatest emergency. Nothing hut supper 
will tear her away from it. She has her little vanities, 
and is much tickled with straw in the street. 

When the happy moment has arrived, her coolness, 
her nerve, her importance, her power of command, 
her bustle, cannot be exceeded. If the husband dares 
to put his nose into the room, he is immediately 
pushed out. The whole house is at her disposal. 
Grandmamma, even, is put into a corner — the Doctor 
sinks into a mere black shadow— the servants run 
quickest at her orders. No one moves, not a person 
comes in, without her crying out, in a whisper of 
agony, "Hussssh." She alone has the power of 
opening the bed-room curtains — she alone has the 
authority to withdraw the bolt of the door— she alone 
has the handling of baby and the privilege of with 
drawing the flannels that are curled round it, like a 
hot roll, to keep it warm— and showing its face, and 
hands, and feet, to its young brothers and sisters. No 
one is allowed to take it out of the cradle without 
Nurse's permission. Young ladies, who have such an 
extraordinary love (in public) for everybody's babies 
are not allowed to kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss it again and 
again, and toss it up and clatter " chuky ! chuky ! 
chuky!" until it cries, without the express sanction 
of Nurse. Man, during the first thirty days of his 
existence, is the property of the Monthly Nurse. 
Every one must feel this, for if there is one tiling 
truer than another in this sceptical world, it is that 
'we all have been babies once." If there is a woman 
who can contradict that, 1 hope I may never meet her 



30 THE MODEL MONTHLY NURSE 

The Model Nurse, however, does not ill-use her 
young property. She sings to it her choicest songs, 
and chirrups, and talks with it, putting the most 
curious questions, without ever waiting for an answer 
to a single one of them. " Shall it be a Princy-wincy ? " 
or, "Did its naughty little finger-pinger go into its 
little angel's eye, and hurt my little poppsy-moppsy 
woppsy ? " or, " Was it that nasty how-wow that pre- 
vented it going to by-bye ? " It is coaxed off to sleep in 
the kindest manner, Nurse hiding it in her breast, 
whispering in its ear some nursery tune, and beating 
time with her slipper. This is done without any 
manual force, or shaking, as if it were a medicine- 
bottle, and without the aid of old Bogie or the 
" black man a-coming round the corner." Rarely 
does she smack the baby on its back when it is choking, 
or when her dinner is nearly ready. She would as 
soon think of eating her cucumber without pepper, 
salt, and vinegar, as pinching " her dear little ducksy- 
wucksy." She is most motherly, and does not make 
it cough when feeding it with a disproportioned spoon, 
nor take any of the baby's food herself. She is very 
clever in detecting resemblances, hut a strong family 
likeness generally runs through all her babies. Never 
did she have a child born but what it had its " dear 
father's nose," and "its mother's pretty eyes, bless it." 

She talks of the children frequently as if they were 
her own. She will tell you, " I was dreadfully dis- 
tressed last year, sir. I had ten children in nine 
months; but that was not so bad as the year before, 
for I had twins twice running I thought I should 



THE MODEL MONTHLY NUKSE. 31 

never get over it; but they are all doing well, 
thank Heaven." 

Her superstitions are few. If the child is born on 
a Friday, she holds her tongue about it. If, Quaker 
like, however, it is born "with a caul," so much the 
better— it is her perquisite. She hunts for moles and 
marks, but draws no prognostications from them. Her 
delight with twins is unbounded; and this is no 
duplicity, because her gratuities sensibly increase : 
but because her importance swells twice as big. She 
becomes incorporated with the mighty event ; and no 
one derives more consequence, more pleasure (and deci- 
dedly more profit), from it than Nurse : for the heart 
must indeed be asphalte-— harder even, for asphalte 
melts sometimes — to refuse half-a- crown to a nurse with 
a double attraction. The eldest she marks with a gay 
ribbon ; and this is the only distinction she makes be- 
tween the two. She is most particular about the exact 
difference of their ages. Only think of the after-value 
of her testimony ! One word from her, and one of 
those dear little babies is a beggar for life. She knows 
well enough that in Law, when there is a disputed 
race between two brothers, it is invariably he who 
has the start who carries off the prize. If this is 
so important, then, between two, what must it not be 
when there is a lot of brothers all entered for the 
same race ? It cannot be wondered at, therefore, if 
the Model Nurse is so particular about the value of a 
minute ! Many an elder brother would be living, per- 
haps, in a second floor, but for her ! 

The Model Nurse can sleep anywhere — in an arm- 



32 THE MODEL MONTHLY NURSE. 

chair, or a bed-stool, or on a sofa. " Nature's gentle 
restorer " visits her at a single wink. She does not 
snore. A touch, a sigh almost, wakes her up, and, in a 
second, she is by the head of her patient, offering 
all sorts of remedies, and smoothing the pillow. She 
does not take snuff. 

It is curious she never goes to bed. At least, 
during my long experience, I never recollect an 
instance of a nurse undressing. A nightcap and a 
mysterious black bottle, and she would sleep like a 
perfect top, I think, on the top of the spire of 
Strasburg Cathedral. 

When the month is nearly burnt out, her irradiance 
grows fainter, her effulgence illumines a smaller circle, 
every day. She no longer barricades the door, she 
mixes freely with the servants, and will sow on a 
button for " Master.' ' She takes anything there is for 
dinner, and does not ring for a lemon after tea. At 
last ! she leaves with her bundle (Nurses don't move 
much on the "trunk" line), and calls two or three 
days afterwards to see the " sweet little cherub," and 
to inquire how her "dear good lady is getting on." 
As years whirl on, she becomes the mother (No. 2) of 
a large family, and delights in reminding you, every 
time she sees you, that she brought you into the world 
" Ah ! Master Horace " (let you be ever so old, it is 
always Master), "what a lovely baby you were to be 
sure ; but you 've grown since then ;' and then she 
unrolls various little anecdotes, at which you smile 
with manly contempt, about your infancy and that of 
all your brothers and sisters; and it is verv strange 



THE MODEL MONTHLY NURSfc. 33 

that you were every one of you "the most lovely 
babies." Believe Nurse, and you are all quite a family 
of " angels." She rattles on, knows the date almost to 
a minute of each birth. " Yes ! I recollect, it was 
twins, for it was a good fruit season that year, and 
you know. sv, disy say that apples una bhoies always 
run together. Yes— how proud your sweet suffering 
mother was, to be sure ; but somehow I thought your . 
dear good father did not look so pleasant as he migbt 
have done ; and yet you were the finest babies, sir, I 
ever set my eyes upon — and in my time, sir, I have 
seen a few." So she will gossip for hours, if you 
only listen to her. 

She is always clean ; but her ornaments are con- 
fined to a big wedding-ring, as if it belonged to a 
defunct bed-curtain ; but then she is most particular 
in displaying this moral ornament. She is a favourite 
in the house; and when she calls, there is always a 
cry raised in the passage of "Oh! here's Nurse." 
She is invited into the parlour, and has " just called 
to inquire after the young ladies. Lor ! Miss, how 
you have grown, I declare." She has a glass of wine, 
and never leaves without some little present ; and from 
her side-pocket (she is one of the few who still hold 
to side-pockets) is seen peeping out of a collar of 
brown paper the neck of a black bottle, which people do 
say is Rum. But " we re not so young now as we used 
to be," and sciatica is not a pleasant companion on a 
cold, winter's night, and business is not so brisk now, and 
the "roomattics" are dreadful bad to be sme— (strange, 
that as we ascend in life, the only height gained seems 



*4 THE MODEL MONTHLY NURSE 

tc be the " roomattics !") ; — so even supposing it is tha 
best Jamaica pine-apjrte rum, it would be a most 
shabby thing, indeed, to throw it in the face of tho 
|>oor Model Monthly Nubse ! 




TOE MODEL GOVERNESS. 




ESPECTABLT con 
nected , young, accom 
1L plished, but poor, is 
the Model Governess. 
She closes the door 
against all acquaint- 
ances and relations the moment she enters her situa 
tion, and as for Mends, she loses them all — forgets in 
time the very name of one ; for who ever heard of a 
Governess with friends ? She never goes out, and is 
allowed no visitors. To be perfect, she should be 
ugly. Woe betide her, if she be pretty ! The mother 
suspects her, the young ladies hate her, and even the 
ladies-maid cannot " abide her:" Her beauty only 
exposes her to compliments and attentions from the 
guests, and this makes the young ladies all the more 
jealous, and the mother all the more irate against her 
The young gentlemen of the house, also, persist in 
flirting with her, and this rouses the suspicions and 
sneers of the old gentleman. He arouses her of making 
love, of " laying traps " for his sons, and of being " an 
artful, designing jade " 



36 THE MODEL GOVERNESS. 

She bears all without a murmur, and never retorts. 
It is her sad situation to be always suspected. A 
letter cannot come to her by the post, but it instantly 
raises a storm of uncharitable surmises— -in fact, any- 
thing like a correspondence is highly improper, and 
forbidden accordingly. Her drawings and paintings 
elicit loud encomiums, but they are all showered on 
the young ladies, who have put their initials in the 
corner : the Model Governess is not thought of, much 
less praised. 

A kind word has such a strange effect upon her, 
that it frequently makes her run up to her room, where 
she hides herself and cries bitterly, yet joyfully. It is 
very curious, she is never ill— at least she never con- 
fesses to it. Tier dress, of course, must be of the very 
plainest. All light colours are prohibited as strictly 
as cousins. It is all the better, in fact, if she wears 
caps. A pair of spectacles, also, enhance the claims 
of a Model Governess, especially if she be not more 
than twenty. She must not mind being told once 
a-week that she is eating the " bread of dependence ;" 
and, above all, she must "know her station,' ' though 
it is rather difficult to say what that station is. It is 
not the drawing-room, it is not the kitchen, nor is it 
the young ladies' room. It must be the landing- 
place. 

Children are her especial delight : they tell tales 
against her, outvie one another in teasing her — play 
little practical jokes, peculiar to juvenile geniuses, 
with her work-box and desk. The whole life of the 
Ctverness is a living sermon upon the holy text of 



THE MODEL GOVEKNESS 87 

the forgiveness of injuries. Her amusements are few ; 
for singing cannot be called singing when it is done 
by command, and dancing is but sony dancing 
when you are requested to join in it merely to fill 
up a side-couple. Her accomplishments, however, 
are manifold, though exercised for the benefit of 
others. 

She is an Encyclopaedia in bombazeen, which 
must be ready to be referred to at a moment's notice 
by every one in the house upon every possible and 
impossible science, including the very latest improve- 
ments, corrections, and additions that may have taken 
place in philosophy, poetry, or puddings. She plays 
the harp, piano, and accordion ; teaches calisthenics 
and hair-curling ; dances the newest fashionable 
dances, from Bohemia or Andalusia ; understands 
glove-cleaning and dress-making ; is clever at Berlin 
wool-work ; in short, must have every female accom- 
plishment at her fingers' ends. She knows eight or 
ten languages, but mustn't talk unless spoken to. 
Her greatest talent should be displayed in listening 
cleverly. Her sympathy should be all upon one side, 
like the Irishman's unanimity. She must have no 
views of her own, but only reflect, like a looking-glass, 
those of the person who is consulting her. Her whole 
life is a heritage of petty meannesses. She has not 
the consideration that is paid to a cook, and very 
frequently not half the wages that are paid to a 
housemaid; in fact, the housemaid has the advantage 
of the two, for she is entitled at least to a month's 
warning, whereas the poor Governess is often dis- 



88 



THE MODEL GOVERNESS 



missed at a moment's notice. The Model Governess 
is literally the maid-of-all-work of fashionable society 
Ladies, think of your own daughters, and treat 
her kindly! 




THE MODEL DAUGHTEE. 




H E comes down to break- 
fast before tbe tea- 
things are taken away. 
She is always ready 
for <}inner. She curls 
her own hair, and can 
undress herself with- 
out a servant. She 
is happy at home 
without going to a 
ball every night She 
has not & headache 
when her papa asks 
her to sing. She 
"practises" only when 
he is out. She does 
not have hei letters addressed to the pastrycook's, or 
make a postman of the housemaid. She does not read 
novels in bed. She dresses plainly for church, and 
returns to luncheon without her head cramfull of bon- 
nets. She is not perpetually embroidering mysterious 
braces, or knitting secret purses, or having a Turkish 
slipper on hand for some anonymous foot in the 
D 



40 THE MODEL DAUGHTER 

Guards. Her fingers are not too proud to mend a 
stocking, or make a pudding. She looks attentively 
after the holes in her father's gloves. She is a clever 
adept in preparing gruel, white-wine whey, tapioca, 
chicken hroth, beef-tea, and the thousand little house- 
hold delicacies of a sick-room. She is a tender nurse, 
moving noiselessly about, whispering words of comfort, 
and administering medicine with an affection that robs 
it of half its bitterness. She does not scream at a leech, 
or faint at the sight of a blackbeetle. She does not 
spin poetry, nor devour it in any great quantity. She 
does not invent excuses for not reading the debates to 
her father of an evening, nor does she skip any of the 
speeches. She always has the pillow ready to put 
under his head when he falls asleep. She can behold 
an officer with womanly fortitude without falling in 
love. She does not keep her mother waiting an hour 
at an evening party for "just another waltz." She 
never contracts a milliner's bill unknown to her 
parents — " she would die sooner." She is not above 
going down to the kitchen to gi\e out soap or pearlash 
to the maids. She orders the dinners, and is the 
appointed treasurer of the store-room She never 
stitched a Red Turk in her life. She soars above 
Berlin wool and crying " one-two-three-one-two-three" 
continually. She knows nothing of crotchets, or 
" Woman's Mission." She studies housekeeping, is 
perfect in the common rules of arithmetic, pays the 
servants' wages, is acquainted with the price of mutton 
to a farthing, and can tell pretty nearly how many 
* long sixes " go to a pound. She checks the weekly 



THE MODEL DAUGHTER. 41 

bills, and does not blush if seen in a. butcher's shop on 
a Saturday. She is not continually fretting to go to 
Paris, or " dying" to see Jenny Lind ; nor does she 
care much about " that love Mario." She does not 
take long walks by herself, and come home saying 
" she lost her way." She treats her father's guests 
with equal civility, making no distinction between the 
gentleman and the tradesman. She is not fond of 
pulling all the things over in a shop merely to buy 
" a packet of pins." She can pass a Marchande de 
Modes without stopping. She never dresses in silks 
or satins the first thing in the morning, nor is she 
looking out of the window or admiring herself in the 
looking-glass all day long. She makes the children's 
frocks, and plays a little at chess and backgammon, 
and takes a hand at whist occasionally — " anything to 
please her dear father." Her grog, too, elicits the 
warmest encomiums from the old gentlemen who drop 
in. She does not send home " lovely" jewellery for her 
father to look at. She does not lace herself to death, 
nor take vinegar to make herself thin. She wears 
thick shoes in wet weather. She flirts but moderately, 
and has a terrible horror of coquetting. She is kind 
to the servants, and conceals their little faults from 
their " Master and Missus." She takes the children to 
school, makes them rich plum-cakes and tarts, and gives 
them little sums out of the housekeeping — when the 
" Charities" swell, perhaps, a little larger that week. She 
never pouts if scolded, nor shuts herself up in her room 
to cultivate " the sulks." She is the pet of her " darling 
papa," and warms his slippers regularly on a winter's 



42 



THE MODEL DAUGHTER 



night, and lights his candle before going up to bed. 
She is her mamma's " dear good girl," as is sufficiently 
proved by her being intrusted with all the keys of the 
housekeeping. There is terrible crying when she is 
married, and for days afterwaids nothing is heuc in 
the house but regrets and loud praises, and earnest 
prayers for the happiness of the Model Daughter. 





THE MODEL 

JLOB(S-Iir(&=HOI[J§E KIEFM, 



thf mopfx Lodging-house keepeb 




'S very sorry, but she cannot 
make twenty breakfasts, and 
wait upon twenty gentlemen 
all at once ! You really must 
wait a little longer. — She is 
so hurt to hear that the chil- 
dren disturb you! She has 
the greatest trouble in keep- 
ing them quiet, but begs you 
will not hesitate to mention 
it if they are at all noisy. She 
has told them at least fifty 
times never to come into your 
room, the little plagues ! — 
She hopes you feel yourself comfortable ? Well ! it 's 
very strange, but the chimney never did smoke before; 
whatever can be the cause of it ? Oh ! that noise at 
the back is the skittle-ground — she quite forgot to 
mention it previously, but her house adjoins " a 
public,' ' — it's a great nuisance to be sure, but it's 
only of an evening, and won't trouble you much after 
eleven. 

She can't for the life of her make out who takes 
your books ! all she knows that she 's no time for 



4A THE MODEL LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 

reading — it must be that hussey, Ann ; she '11 send 
her away as sure as she 's born, if she catches her at 
it! — You must make a mistake — there was n't a bit of 
the leg left yesterday, she's ever so positive there 
was n't — she can show you the bone if you wish it. — 
She never recollects coals so abominably dear ; it 's 
quite shameful ! The ton you had in last week is all 
gone, and she was obliged to lend you a coal-scuttle 
herself this morning. — She can't make out what makes 
the paper so very late— those tiresome boys are enough 
to wear one's life out.— She 's very sorry if there 's no 
mustard in the house, she has told Ann to get some 
at least a hundred times, if she has told her once, but 
it's of no use She must get rid of the girl! Lor! 
how very provoking — she wishes you had only told 
her you wanted some hot water for your feet — she's 
just that very minute put the kitchen fire out, but 
there 's some delicious cold water, if you 'd like any. 

What ! a FLEA ! ! ! (it is quite impossible to ex- 
press this scream in type ; the reader must imagine 
in his mind's ear something eqaial in shrillness to a 
railway whistle) — A FLEA ! ! ! did you say ? Oh ! 
that she should live to hear such a thing ! She 's 
only a poor lcne widow, and it 's cruel— that it is — to 
throw such a thing in her face ! Well ! if you are 
bitten all over, it's no fault of hers; you must have 
brought the " nasty things" in yourself. Her house 
is known to be the sweetest house in the whole street, 
you can ask anybody if it is n't ! — Would you be kind 
enough not to ring the bell so often — there's a poor 
invalid lady on the first floor, and it distresses her 



THE MODEL LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 45 

sadly! — She begs your pardon, but linen always was 
an extra : she had a gentleman who stopt in her two 
parlours once for ten years; he was a very nice gentle- 
man to be sure, something in the law, and he never 
all the time raised so much as a murmur against the 
linen, nor any other gentleman that she has had any 
dealings with ; you must be mistaken. 

She really cannot clean more than one pair of 
boots a-day — some persons seem to have no bowels 
for the servants, poor creatures! — Well ! what's the 
matter with the curtains, she should like very much 
to know ? What, rather old ! Well ! on her word 
it's the first time she's ever been told so, and they 
have not been up eight years, if so much, but 
decidedly not more ! However, if persons are not 
satisfied, they had better go — she has been offered 
three and sixpence a- week more for the rooms — and 
goodness knows she does n't make a blessed farthing 
by them. She's anxious to satisfy everybody, but 
cannot do wonders — and what 's more, won't, to please 
anybody! — She's extremely sorry to hear that you 
have lost half your shirts, but she cannot be answer- 
able for her servants, of course She has told her 
lodgers over and over again always to be careful and 
lock their drawers, till she 's fairly tired of telling 
them! What do you say? They always have been 
locked ! Well ! she shouldn't at all wonder now that 
you suspect her ? — if so, she can only tell you to your 
face that she does n't wear shirts, and begs that you'll 
suit yourself elsewhere. She never experienced such 
treatment in all her life, and more than that, she wont 



46 THE MODEL LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER 

— no, not to please Prince Albert, or the very best lodger 
in the world ! Perhaps you 11 accuse her next of 
stealing your tea and sugar? What, you do ? Well! 
she's ashamed of you, that she is, and should like 
exceedingly to know what you call yourself? A 
gentleman indeed ! No more a gentleman than she 
is a gentleman. However, she won't harbour such 
gentlemen in her house, she 's determined of that, so 
you '11 please take the usual notice, and bundle your- 
self off as quick as you can, and precious good 
riddance too ! She won't stand nonsense from any- 
body, though she is nothing better than a poor lone 
widow, and has not a soul to protect her in the wide 
world ! She never s aw such a gentleman 

Not a word more, however, is said. The next 
evening some oysters are sent in for supper "with 
Missus' compliments ; please, she says they 're beauti- 
fully fresh;" or if it is Sunday, she goes in herself 
with her best cap, and two plates, one over the other, 
and " hopes you will excuse the liberty, but the joint 
looked so nice, she thought you would just like a slice 
of hot meat for luncheon, with a nice brown potato." 
She stirs the fire, sees that the windows are fastened 
down tight — can't make out where the draught comes 
from ! asks in the softest voice whether you would n't 
like a glass of pale ale ? and finishes by dusting with 
her apron the mantelpiece and all the chairs, and 
hoping that you 're perfectly comfortable ? 

As the fatal day draws near, she knocks at the 
door " Is she disturbing you? Would you be land 



THE MODEL LODGING-HOUSE KEEPER. 



47 



enough to let her have a little drop of brandy — she 
should esteem it a great favour — she feels such a 
dreadful sinking." 

The next morning she lays the breakfast cloth 
herself. For the first time the weekly bill is not 
ready, "but she's in no hurry — any time will do. 
Why! surely you re not thinking of going in this 
way ? You have been with her so long ; she should 
be miserable to lose you — such a nice gentleman too 
— you cannot mean to go ! " 

But, alas! there is no appeal. Here let us run 
away. Language is too weak to describe the fearful 
slammings and hangings of every door, and the noisy 
sarcasms of that last day. Arithmetic, also, falls 
powerless before the awful array of formidable "extras" 
ai that last week's bill of the Model Lodging-House 
Keeper 




— r 



w 



THE MODEL TIGER. 

^ ITH his heels, he does not exceed 
three feet four, 
Tiger height. 
He looks best 
on tip toe behind 
a high cab. He 
never hangs on 
the straps with- 
out gloves. He 
is far too proud 
to whistle. He 
is strongly at- 
tached to a rose- 
bud in his but- 
ton-hole. You 
never see him 
with a straw in 
his mouth, much 
less a pipe. His 
tops are as smooth as his chin. He jumps off his board 
and springs up again without defiling the snowy purity 
of his cords. He is above swearing before a horse- 
guard, or nurse, or pretty barmaids, or timid ladies'- 
maids. He is a favourite with " cookie.' ' He is not 
particular, but allows no nonsense from the ostler 




THE MODEL TIGER 49 

and kicks down, most indignantly, all doctors' boys 
that attempt to jump on the step behind. His knock 
is a study for a titled footman. He hates being kept 
waiting at a turnpike. He rarely holds converse with 
cabmen, conductors, and such-like, unless he is driving 
the cab by himself, when he tells them to " look sharp 
there." If he has a weakness, it is a readiness for 
fighting. He will spar with Ben Caunt, if he feels 
insulted. He waits at table, and knows how to open 
a bottle of champagne without spilling half of it over 
you ; the same with soda-water. He is clever at deli 
vering messages and letters. He can tell a lie as well 
as the best servant, when needed. He will carry game, 
but objects to parcels — at least is never seen with one. 
He is proud of the " governor," and always takes a 
fair half of whatever he does, as, "Didn't we have a 
lark at Greenwich last night?" or, " Didn't we astonish 
them at the Derby just a few ? " He is very polite, 
and touches his hat with the military forefinger, more 
especially to ladies. His greatest delight is to have a 
watch ; his wildest ambition to get whiskers. 

The Model Tiger leads a happy life, is much courted 
in the fashionable areas, but his head is not turned 
with the praises he receives for being a " little dapper 
fellow." He would change with no man, excepting 
a jockey. He should like to win a Leger, but gives it 
up, as being far beyond him. He takes the greatest 
pride m his person, in his cab, and his blood mare, 
which he considers just as much his as his master's 
He is as "nimble as ninepence " (whatever that 
amount may be which is purchasable by so small 



50 THE MODEL TIGEK 

a sum), and should like to see the horse he cannot 
master. lie rides as well as he drives, and is quite 
unmoved, even if he gets hedged in by a heid of oxen, 
or has to assist at a grand review. He has no great 
soul for the theatres, excepting it is the " horse busi- 
ness,' 7 at Astley's. 

But one fear cuts up the smoothness of his path — 
that is, the chance of his growing any bigger He 
feels that if he gets taller, he shall be knocked off his 
board by some one a size smaller. The long-desired 
whiskers come straggling at last. He shaves with 
unbounded delight at first, but his hand shakes after 
a time ; lie turns pale at such undoubted proofs of 
manhood. He would always remain a boy, and die in 
his darling top-boots, the epitome of a pocket Mopel 
Tiger. 




THE MODEL FAST LAHt. 





I HERE cannot be the most vulgar 
fraction of a doubt that the 
great attribute of the present 
age is Fast — very Fast. Too 
many of us are trained as if 
we were to form part of " John 
Scott's Lot." It is as clear as 
the course the minute before the 
Derby, that the quicker our pace in this world, the 
surer we are to win. The race of life is only to the 
Fastest. If Fen e Ion were asked to-morrow what were 
the great requisites for a young person to get on in the 
world, he would infallibly answer, " Only three : the 
first is, Be Fast ; the second, Keep Fast; and the third, 
Hold Fast." 

The Model Fast Lady acts as if she had received 

£ 



52 THE MODEL FAST LADY. 

this golden, or rather brazen, advice. Kiding is ono 
of her great hobbies. Walking is far too slow for her 
A smart gallop does her such a world of good. To be 
in " at the death " is a series of triumphs for a week. 
You could almost swear that the " brush " is displayed 
on her toilet-table. 

She delights in dogs ; not King Charles's, but big 
dogs that live in kennels. She takes them into the 
drawing-room, and makes them leap over the chairs. 
Her mare, too, is never out of her mouth. The incre- 
dible things she has done with that dear creature— the 
tremendous fences that she has taken, and the five- 
barred gates — you would scarcely believe. It must 
have been born in leap year. Sbe knows the pedigree 
of all the illustrious horses and pointers of any note 
for miles round. If she be intimate with you, she will 
call you " my dear fellow ; " and if she take a fancy 
to you, you will be addressed the first time by your 
Christian name, familiarised very shortly from Henry 
into Harry. Her father is hailed as "Governor." 
Her speech, in fact, is a little masculine. If your eyes 
were shut, you would fancy it was a " Fast Man " 
speaking, so quick do the " snobs," and " nobs," and 
"chaps," and "dowdies," " gawkies," "spoonies," 
"brats," and other cherished members of the Fast 
Human Family run through her loud conversation. 
Occasionally, too, a "Deuce take it," vigorously 
thrown in, or a "Drat it," peculiarly emphasised, 
will startle you ; but they are only used as interjec- 
tions, and mean nothing but " Alas ! " or " Dear me !" 
or, at the most, "How provoking!" One of her 



THE MODEL FAST LADY 53 

favourite words is "Bother," so you had better be 
careful, and not " bother " her too much, or else she 
will be sure to tell you, and that very plainly too. 

The Model Fast Lady is not particularly attached 
to dancing. If she does not admire your appearance, 
" she was out with the hounds this morning, and is too 
tired for that sort of thing.' 1 When she does dance, 
however, large officers, or colossal huntsmen, are gene- 
rally her partners. Her pride then is to pass every 
body. She waltzes as if she had mad j a wager 
to go lound the room one hundred and fifty times in 
five minutes-and-a-quarter. If any one is pushed over 
by the rapidity of her Olga revolutions, she does not 
stop, but merely " laughs, and "hopes no limbs are 
broken ; " and if her dress gets torn, " Never mind, 
she has got another one somewhere at home." 

By-the-bye, if she has a weakness, it is on the 
score — rather a long one — of wagers. She is always 
betting. If you happen by some odd accident to say, 
"I think it will rain," the chances are, she willimme 
diately say, "I'll bet you 5 to 1 it doesn't." She 
keeps a little pocket-book to register her bets. Towards 
Epsom and Ascot it is almost bursting with the odds ; 
and she rushes about asking everybody " to lay her 
something." She will take the field, or hedge, or back 
the winner, or scratch, or do anything to oblige you. 
It must be mentioned, however, that she is most 
honourable in the payment of her debts. She would 
sell her Black Bess sooner than levant. 

The Model Fast Lady has, at best, but a superficial 
knowledge of the art of flirting. All compliments sho 



54 THE MODEL FAST LADY. 

calls " stuff." She likes persons to be sensible ; and 
has no idea of being made a fool of. Come, don't 
praise her ; just help her to a little bit more mutton, 
and look alive. 

At a p'onic sbp- is invaluable. When your tumbler 
is empty, shell taKe champagne with you — that is to 
say, if you 're not too proud. You may as well fill her 
glass; she has no notion of being cheated. Here's 
better luck to you ! — and to enforce it, she runs the 
point of her parasol into your side. 

In laying the dejeuner, or ''snack," as she terms 
it — she is very abstemious of foreign phrases — she 
arranges the knives and forks and plates ; mixes the 
salad, and at an emergency can supply a corkscrew — 
it belongs to her dressing-case. She orders all the 
young men about as if they had been hired for the day, 
and speaks almost as familiarly to the servants. 

Returning home she steers, and has been seen, on 
two or three occasions, rowing. She dislike smoking ? 
not she indeed, she 's rather fond of it. In fact, she 
likes a "weed" herself occasionally, and to convince 
you will take two or three whiffs, till, abashed by the 
"Oh's! " and the "My dears!" of the young and 
elderly ladies, she throws it into the river, with the 
excuse that " it's a shocking bad one." When pressed 
to sing, she does not warble " I'd be a butterfly,' ' but 
bursts into a " Southerly wind and a cloudy sky " 

Her fore-finger is not much needle-marked, and 
she laughs at Berlin wool and all such frippery If 
she makes a present to some young gentleman of a 
pair of handsome emblazoned braces, she buys them 



THE MODEL EAST LADY. 55 

ready-made. She declares she will never marry unless 
her husband is a good needlewoman. She has a 
pianoforte, but really has no patience to practise. Be- 
sides, where's the benefit? every one plays no w-a-days. 
If she wants a bravura, or any sing-song nonsense, she 
has only to ring the bell, and tell Jane to sit down to 
the piano, and she can have " variations " enough to 
last her in headaches for six months. She can manage 
a short tune, however, on the cornet-a-piston. 

She plays at cards — not for love, but money ; will 
submit to the slow torture of Loo, and even rushes 
coldly into the horrors of Blind Hookey ; but beiore 
beginning, she is honest enough to give warning that 
she always cheats ; and if detected, only says, " Well, 
I told you so." 

• She has no great yearning for canaries, or any 
birds, excepting in their gravy and bread-sauce state 
She went out shooting once, but gave it up, the 
" boobies laughed and stared so." Fishing is a different 
thing, but it 's stupidly slow ; she would as soon mend 
stockings any day. 

The Fast Lady rather avoids children. If a baby 
is put into her hands, she says, " Pray, somebody, 
come and take this thing, I'm afraid of dropping it." 
She prefers the society of men, too, to that of her own 
sex. After dinner she is very quiet, turns over in 
silence the engravings of some picture-book, but 
directly the gentlemen enter the drawing-room she is 
chatty again, and " begs to return thanks for the 
honour which the gentleman have done the ladies in 
drinking their very good healths " 



bb THE MODEL FAST LADY. 

Her costume is not regulated much by the fashions, 
and she is always the first to come down when the 
ladies have gone up stairs to change their dress. Gay 
colours please her the most, and she succeeds, generally, 
in attracting notice by some peculiarity ; either, on an 
evening, by the largeness of her bouquet, or little mara- 
bout feathers trussed all about her hair, or, when out 
walking, having an ugly monster of a dog following 
her, or a big footman walking after her with a basket 
full of kittens ; or else she will promenade the streets 
in a riding-habit, and the people will stare about 
in all directions, to see what has become of the horse, 
and all this passes to her infinite amusement. The 
first person she meets, she gives him the whole history 
of it, illustrated with laughs. 

Her greatest accomplishment is to drive. With the 
whip in one hand, and the reins in the other, and a 




key-bugle behind, she would not exchange places with 
the Queen herself. It is rumoured, also, that she can 
swim, but there is no authentic proof of this. She 



THE MODEL FAST LADY. 57 

will drink a sherry-cobbler out of the same tumbler 
with you any day. 

Literature is a sealed pleasure to her, though she 
reads Bell's Life, and has a few odd volumes in her 
bed-room of the Sporting Magazine. She knows there 
was a horse of the name of Byron. 

With all these peculiarities and manly addictions, 
however, the Fast Lady is veiy good-hearted. Her 
generosity, too, must be included amongst her other 
faults, for she gives to all, and increases the gift 
by sympathy. She is always in good humour, and 
dearly loves a joke. She is an excellent daughter, 
and her father doats on her, and lets her do 
what she likes, for "he knows she will never do 
anything wrong, though she is a strange girl." In 
the country she is greatly beloved. The poor people 
call her " a dear good Miss," and present their peti 
tions, and unfold all their little griefs to her. She is 
continually having more presents of pups sent to her 
than she knows what to do with. The farmers, too, 
consult her about their cows and pigs, and she is the 
godmother to half the children of the parish. She is 
a favourite generally among the men,. but the ladies 
turn their backs rather tepidly upon her, and call her 
11 forward," and she is consequently by no comparison 
so popular at the tea-parties as at the different sub- 
scription packs of the neighbourhood. 

Her deficiencies, after all, are more those of manner 
than of feeling. She may be too largely gifted with 
the male virtues, but then she has a very sparing col- 
lection of the female vices ; that is to say, she has no 



58 TliE MODEL FAST J.ADY. 

taste for ill-natured scandal, is not given to novels, 
ilirting, or jilting, and is no more a coquette than the 
Lady in the lobster, that great model of the female 
sex. Nature may be to blame for ha "ring made her 
one of the weaker vessels, but imperfect and manly as 
she is, she still retains the inward gentleness of the 
wnnan, and many fine ladies, who stand the highest 
in the pulpits of society, would preach none th<5 less 
effectively if they had only as good a heart — even wiii 
the trumpery straw in which, like a rich fruit, it Is 
enveloped— as the Model Fast Lady. 





THI 



eft?r<>" 




IBE. MODEL ACTRESS. 



HE rises very early. Iter 
first thought is to look at 
the newspaper, and see if her 
name is mentioned in the 
criticism of the new piece. 
Not a word! She dresses 
very quickly, and takes her 
breakfast standing, studying 
her new "part" all the 
while. At ten she is in the 
theatre, in a black atmo- 
sphere, ruled with long 
white lines of daylight, 
pouring down from the dif- 
ferent skylights The whole 
place is redolent of cobwebs, 
orange-peel, and the stale smoke of last night's blue 
fire. She attends the reading of a new play. She then 
listens to the " cutting" of the new piece, and proceeds 
to the rehearsal of it. Her " part ' ' is clipt to two lines; 
still she clots not murmur, but is secretly thankful 
it is not taken out altogether. She waits behind the 
scenes, lingering about the musty corridors till one 
o'clock, when there is a general rehearsal of the grand 
new burlesque. The manageress, however, does not 




60 THE MODEL ACTRESS 

arrive till two, — then the properties are not ready, the 
daubs of scenes are not set, the stage-manager has 
"just stept round the corner " (a delicate figure for the 
public-house, very popular in theatres), and the young 
author is flirting in front with one of the ballet-girls. 
At last the rehearsal begins Each dance is repeated 
two or three times, the military ones especially; and 
the author is very proud about his jokes, and will not 
have them murdered. This makes it four o'clock 
before the rehearsal is over. The actress rushes up- 
stairs to see about her dress : this is a matter of great 
importance, and half an hour soon flies before the 
looking-glass. As she is running out of the theatre, 
she is called back by the musical conductor, " to try 
over her song quietly by herself." So she leaves the 
theatre almost as the boxkeepers are coming into it, 
too lucky if she is not detained at the door by a loud 
cry of " Ladies and gents, the last act, if you please, 
once more." She gets away, however, before the big 
chandelier is lighted, astonished to find the sun is 
shining in the streets. 

She runs home, and sinks in an arm-chair quite worn 
and spiritless. The dinner is cold ; she has no appe- 
tite ; she longs to sleep, but is afraid to lie down Be- 
sides, she has not a moment to lose. She has to get 
perfect in her new part, to try on her new dress (she 
dresses and undresses about ten times a-day), to arrange 
her hair, sew some ribbons on to her cap, and be at 
the theatre again a little before seven. 

Then the business of her clay commences. She is 
an empress in tho first piece, blazing with mock dia- 



THE MODEL ACTRESS. 61 

nionds, drinking "property" champagne, and giving 
away millions of tin roubles. She is a saucy maid in 
the farce, with her gay cap, boxing her mistresses' ears, 
and being kissed, alternately, by the smart groom, 
the young Captain, the old Uncle, and the Yorkshire 
coachman. She is the Fairy Barleysugarina in the 
last piece, and has to dance, and sing negro songs, and 
fight a grand sword-combat for ten minutes, and to 
dress up in hussar, Amazonian, and policemen's 
clothes ; besides being suspended by a rope in the last 
scene. It is full one o'clock before the performances 
are over. She has to undress and dress again, and to 
see the stage-manager heforp going, probably to be 
reprimanded for her petticoats not being short enough. 
She gets home between one and two. It is too late for 
supper. The beer is flat ; the fire is out ; and she is too 
glad to get into bed. She is in a hurry to sleep, and 
yet cannot. The " bravos" keep ringing in her ears, 
and the manager's reprimand worries her. She lays 
awake thinking of to-morrow, for there is generally a 
" call" at ten, and she is afraid of not being up, so 
that sleep comes slowly to her heavy eyelids. 

This is the life of the Model Actress in the summer 
time. It is not pleasant then, but it is worse in the 
winter. The hot-house then is changed into an ice 
well. The stage, with its numerous side-scenes, traps, 
and staircases, is one immense collection of draughts, 
as if they had been put there purposely, like those in 
a chemist's shop, to benefit the doctors. The little fire 
in the green-room is blocked up by big men. in low 
cocks and fleshings, just as cold as herself. She 



62 THE MODEL ACTBE8S. 

shivers in a corner, with an old shawl round her 
shoulders. She has a cough prohahly; and a thin 
gauze dress, with spangles, is not the best thing to cure 
it. It rains, perhaps, but she must brave it. She has 
no shillings to bargain for cabs. The Fairy Barley- 
sugarina thinks herself well off if she has a pair of 
clogs and an umbrella, and blest indeed if she gets a 
lift, half-way home, in some Giselle's Brougham. 

This is the daily life of the Model Actress throughout 
the year. She is not married, and it is a blessing for 
her. How could she nurse a crying child when she 
got home? How could she attend to a baby at 
rehearsal, or rock the cradle at the wings ? A hus- 
band, too, would only be in the way at a theatre, and 
she is never at home Her lot is bitter enough without 
any such additional anxieties. Her whole time and 
thoughts must be devoted to the " house" where she 
is engaged. 

She cannot always call the Sunday her own. She 
has frequently to attend at the theatre " after Divine 
service." Her only holiday is Passion week, and then 
she gets no salary ; and the same when the theatre is 
closed, by the caprice of the Mosaic manager, on 
account of "bad business." Her only chance of 
existence then, is to "star" at the Grecian Saloon, 
or, when it comes to the worst, to take the round of the 
musical public-houses, and collect what she can. 

Sometimes she goes into the country, and joins a 
"circuit" in some far-off county. Her prospects do 
not brighten with the change. Her salary becomes a 
chance — in town it was, at least, a certainty. The 



THE MODEL ACTRESS. 63 

receipts are generally divided amongst tlie company, 
and the women do not invariably get the largest share. 
She comes back poorer in purse than ever. 

And what is her salary in town ? Some twenty 
to thirty shillings a-week; and this again is at 
the mercy of that despotic tyrant, the stage-man- 
ager. It is perilled, also, by the loss of her good 
looks. Each night's illness, likewise, is deducted on 
the Saturday. But, somehow, the Model Actress 
is never fined—she never misses a rehearsal — she 
never keeps the stage waiting — and, most luckily 
for her, is rarely ill. She not only lives on her salary, 
but finds her shoes, stockings, and numerous little arti- 
cles of dress, out of it. Sometimes, too, she supports an 
old mother. " Impossible ! Absurd ! " cries the Reader, 
but it is true, nevertheless. " Then she falls ? " Perhaps 
she does — but more frequently she does n't. And if 
the Actress does fall a victim, should n't we rather 
pity than condemn her ? Look to her wants — look to 
her temptations ! — Vanity being by no means the 
weakest amongst them 

How she lives is a mystery ! How she can appear 
gay and laugh in the evening, after the cares and 
fatigues of the whole day, is a mystery still greater ! 
How she can go on for years running backwards and 
forwards, from morning to night, from night to oil but 
morning, in such a dreary hopeless cul-cU-sac, it is 
impossible to tell ! But it is not altogether hopeless 
with the Model Actress. Hope is the secret of her 
existence — it is the talisman that lifts her over the 
sharp flints and stones of her career. She struggles 



u 



THE MODEL ACTRESS 



valiantly, believing in her heart that one day she will 
be a Mrs. Siddons, or a Mrs. Nisbett. Without this 
charm, she could not act. She has little sources of 
pleasure, also, unknown to us. A bouquet tin-own to 
her makes her happy for a week Two or three little 
paragraphs of praise in a paper — a smile, a kind word, 
or a look of encouragement, from Mr. Macready or 
the manager — two or three little compliments dropt in 
her ear by some great man about the theatre, are 
enjoyments that she never forgets. And then the 
applause ! Each round is as good as a day in the 
countiy to her, and an " encore " puts her in good 
humour for a week ; and a lucky hit in a small part 
throws such a glorious sunshine over her path, making 
her future appear so bright, that she has no eyes for the 
gloom about her. These are the simple enjoyments 
that frequently turn the Eealms of Despair into the 
Bowers of Bliss in the dingy scenes of the life of 
Ihe Model Actress. 




MODEL HOUSES 



J^^T^O J export Model Houses to the colonies has 
heen the fashion lately. 
They take to pieces and are 
put together again like a 
Chinese puzzle. They have, 
likewise, the advantage of 
heing packed in a very small 
compass. A gentleman who 
went over to Sydney this 
year assured us he had his 
drawing-room in his trunk, 
the parlour in his port- 
manteau, the attic in his 
carpet-bag, the kitchen in 
his hat-box, and the scullery 
in his coat pocket. A Gray's Inn Lane contractor has 
sent us the following specifications : — 

A Model Lodging-House . — This has been aiv 
ranged upon the plan of the lodging-houses in London. 
The house is made to contain as many rooms as pos 
sible. Cupboards are fltted-up as bedrooms, and beds 
are ingeniously concealed in pianofortes, sideboards, 
and chests of drawers. Two keys have been sent to 
every lock — one for the use of the lodger, and the other 
for the landlady. The pantry is small, as it has been 
found that nothing ever keeps in a lodging-house 
P 




66 



MODEL HOUSES. 



pantry longer than a day. A large pump is also fitted- 
up in the cellar. The most singular thing is, that for 
the number of rooms in this Model House there is only 
one bell, which communicates with the drawing-room ; 
the other rooms have bells, only all the wires are 
broken. One mustard-pot, one coal-scuttle, one dish- 
cover, one teapot, one pair of sugar-tongs, have been 
sent out as the furniture. A long list of "extras," 
as charged in London, has also been sent out. It 
includes boot-cleaning, attendance, towels, and the use 
of a Britannia fork and spoon. A big cat accompanies 
this Model House ; it has a very broad hack, so as to 
be able to bear all the broken things that, in a lodging- 
house, are always put upon it. 




ELIGIBLE APARTMENTS FOR S1N«LE GENTLEMEN .—ENQUIRE WITHIN 

A Model Theatke. —This theatre is like most 
London theatres, half of the seats being so uncom- 
fortably arranged that the spectator cannot see, and 
the other half that he cannot hear. 

A French Dictionary, and a complete set of "La 
France Dramatique," have been sent out with the 
Model 



THE MODEL GENIUS. 




-*- ally in every 
family a Won- 
derful Child. It 
comes in with 
the dessert. It 
is an infant Bab- 
bage's machine. 
One pat on the 
head, and off it 
goes. Its extra- 
ordinary powers 
of recollection 
are almost " too 
painful (as the guests too frequently experience) for 
recital." It runs through Paradise Lost in a minute. 
Dr. Watts, Wordsworth, Gay, Cowper, are all stowed 
away in its little head. You can have any piece vf 
poetiy you like by asking for it. It plays the piano 
also. You must hear the Battle of Prague. It does 
the " shrieks of the wounded " so naturally ; and 
before you go, do listen to its singing. But stop — 
run and change your dress first, my dear. 

Thus ends the first act of the Wonderful Child 
, Ten minutes are supposed to elapse — which is a good 
half-hour when a child changes its frock — and enter 
La Vivandiere. Well ! I do declare ! it 's the very 
picture of Jenny Lind— and, as I live too, it plays the 
drum. The likeness is perfect. How prettily it sings! 



68 THE MODEL GENIUS 

— why, it 's the Rataplan. Well ! I 'm sure, it's quite 
astonishing in a child so young. " How old is it, 
pray?" "Only seven next Michaelmas !" "You 
don't say so? On my word, it's perfectly marvel 
lous! — Will you sing it again, my dear?" And once 
more is the Rataplan drummed through, only more 
loudly than before ; when nurse appears, most oppor 
tunely, to take the clever little darling to bed. 

End of act the second. The gentlemen dawdle 
up stairs to coffee, when there is the pretty little dear 
again! Its fond mamma couldn't let it go to bed 
without its showing the company how nicely she 
dances the Cachuca. It goes through this very juvfr 
nile dance, castanets and all, in a style that elicits 
one unanimous conviction that Taglioni wouldn't 
have done it better. 

Then its drawings are displayed, and a wonderful 
portrait of papa it took when he was asleep, with the 
spectacles on his forehead. Well ! you never saw 
anything like it. But this is not all. Just have the 
kindness to ask it what is the cube root of seven- 
teen ? Positively you could n't have believed it, unless 
you had heard it. " Only seven years old, did you say ?" 
"Not quite — only seven next Michaelmas." "On 
your word, it 's a perfect marvel ! " It can tell you, also, 
what gunpowder is made of ! and pray look at the 
wonderful foliage of that tree — it did every leaf of it 
its little self — is n't it extraordinary, now ? 

At last the Wonderful Child has exhausted its 
Admirable-Crichton stock of talents; but, before the 
company retire, it must recite a few lines of Ydung's 



THE MODEL GENIUS. 69 

Night Thoughts, and it will be sure to mind its stops 
There — that will do— it 's a dear good girl — and now 
it can go to bed, and be sure to get up the first thirjg, 
or else it will never learn its pretty lessons in time. 

The nurse carries it off, and all the company are 
in loud ecstacies about its extraordinary gifts, till they 
leave the house ; when, oddly enough, they all unani- 
mously confess to one another, that that child of 
Mrs. Peacock's is a most "horrible bore." 

These extraordinary gifts, however, which are most 
hospitably received one minute, and most harshly 
turned out of doors the next, are acquired but by 
the very hardest study, as the sickly appearance of 
the "Wonderful Child too plainly betrays. Its cheeks 
are pale, its lips almost colourless, and its sunken 
eye never shows the smallest ray of mental light at 
the recital of the grandest sentiments, but maintains 
one dead stare all the while, as if the book were 
before it, and it was afraid of missing the next line ; 
the same when it is dancing, or singing the gayest 
songs. It laughs even by rote. In fact, there is no 
childhood about it; — it is a living mummy, bound 
hand and foot in rolls of precocious accomplishments. 
It is very clever and very unnatural. 

The Wonderful Child, as it gets older, grows even 
more wonderful. It knows Latin, is learning Greek, 
sings German, Italian, Swedish, Swiss — draws, paints, 
composes, writes verses, and studies astrology out of 
the garret window ; when one chilly night it takes 
cold, is confined to its bed, and dies very suddenly 
Its parents are quite heart-stricken, but they staunch 



70 



THE MODEL GENIUS. 



their tears with the dry comfort that " the little thing 
was far too clever to live." No one likes to tell them 
that if they had not made it so very clever, it might, 
prohahly, he living at the present moment. They 
preserve its dauhs and scratches and rhymes, and 
have a cast of its wonderful head taken, little dreaming 
that it was the weight of that wonderful head that 
bent its slender body to the earth. 

This is too often the fate of a Model Genius. How 
many clever children have been mortally wounded, if 
the truth were known, at that Battle of Prague ! 






MODEL FRONT FOR K " MAISON DK DEUIL. 



THE MODEL WIDOW 

Widows what has not been said? 
They have been compared to 
everything, and yet remain 
incomparable ! 

Some savage has likened 
her heart to an " apartment 
to let," where the incoming 
lodger is sure to find some- 
thing that has been left by 
a previous tenant. Some 



72 THE MODEL WIDOW. 

spiteful Tony Weller has called her " hymeneal 
hydrophobia;" for there is no possible cure for him 
who has once been bitten. 

She has been compared to a magnet over men's 
hearts, because her attraction is only to steal. 

It has been argued that widows should be put 
down, for, like the gypsies, they mean no good, and 
only prowl about for plunder ; whilst others maintain 
that a widow should carry, over her weeds, a board 
marked " dangerous," to warn persons from venturing 
near her, and being immediately " drawn in." 

Young men are cautioned against playing with her, 
or else they will find it a losing game; for she is sure 
to win their hand, like at Ecarte, by dint of " pro- 
posing." 

In fact, what has not been said against the widow? 
It is the character, of all others, that has received from 
the hands of society the most coups d' epingles. 

Is there no such person, then, as a Model Widow ? 
Why, of course, there is : every widow, more or less, is 
one. She is pretty — the ugliest woman looks pretty 
in ruins — and is, has been, or should be young. Her 
eyes are not always shrouded by a fine cambric hand 
kerchief. She wears her cap for pure grief, and not 
for a year afterwards only to look interesting. She 
speaks sparingly of her " dear departed," *™n *>f his 
failings. She wears no miniature as big as a poster, 
on a high wall of crape. She is well provided for, or 
if there is no positive proof of this, there should be at 
least a well-grounded fiction She is retiring, and has 
a violent antipathy for matrimony; so much so indeed, 



THE MODEL WIDOW. 73 

that the mere name of it is enough to send her out of 
the room. She rarely goes into society, but courts 
solitude and dull towns and damp watering-places 
She cannot bear scandal, or a ball, or the opera, or a 
fancy bazaar, or any place where she is likely to be 
seen. You have a difficulty in persuading her to 
leave her bed-room. There she remains shut up, 
allowing no vulgar eye to pry into her sorrow. She 
does not dress for pity, or sigh for sympathy. Her 
piano is neglected. , She lives only for her children. 
What' has the Model Widow any children? — has she a 
ready-made family ? Yes ! we are afraid to say she 
has— but then she does not send them to school, or 
keep them always buried in the country, " because it 
agrees so much better with them," or throw a big 
black veil over their existence. She is always with 
them, walking out with them, and taking a pleasure in 
teaching them. But then she cannot marry again, if she 
has a parish school of little boys and girls? What! 
vould you have her marry a second time ? Why, the 
notion is preposterous ! Matrimony is the very last 
thought that knocks at her heart. Besides, if it did, 
the door is barred, bolted, padlocked, barricaded 
against the possibility of any one entering ! It is only 
a dark vault in which the effigy of her husband is 
intombed with all the graces of mental sculpture, 
over which burns the undying light of her love. 
She alone has the key, and she alone enters to 
worship in secret by herself. Is it likely, then, she 
would defile the sanctity of the place, and break the 
image that has so long been set up on the altar of her 



74 



THE MODEL WIDOW. 



affections, to erect a new shrine, and go on her knees 
to another ? Psha ! no moral, physical, or any other 
revolution could effect that. It would i>e fatal at once 
to the beautiful conception of the Model Widow. 
Hindoo-like, she sacrifices herself on the burning pyre 
of her own heart. If one thing tortures her more 
than another, it is a proposal from any one. Widowers 
and Bachelors, be merciful to her ! 




u k LIGHT, GB3CT8 1 »» 




THE MODEL YOUNG LADY. 

WEET as May flowers," — "blooming as 
a peach," — "timid as a gazelle," — "con- 
stant as a love bird," — " pure as morning 
dew," — such has fair maidenhood for ages 
been described ! Our Model Young Lady 
is all this, and much more. 

She bounds into the arena of society 
full of beauty, conquests, and hope. School is- rapidly 
forgotten, the awful mistress as soon forgiven, her affec- 
tion for "sweeties" and " goodies" almost conquered, 
and her instinct for creams and ices so far subdued 
that she can pasc Gunter's or Granges' without recol- 



76 THE MODEL YOUNG LADY. 

lecting she " wants change." She is very pretty, but 
not too conscious of her beauty; nor does she advertise 
it in " Books of Beauty," and " Flowers of Loveliness," 
nor let herself out as a genteel shopwoman to Charitable 
Bazaars. She is not a fool either, and does not 
consider the smallest politeness the preface to a propo 
sal, nor detect an attachment for life in the offer of 
an arm. Her computation of age is strangely just. 
She does not think all beneath seventeen " chits," nor 
does she consider all above twenty-five dreadfully aged. 
She has not a supreme contempt for boys, or refuse to 
speak to a young man because he has no whiskers. 
Her fondness for dolls is not transferred to live kicking 
babies, and she is not continually begging the nurse 
to let her hold the " dear little thing." She keeps no 
album dedicated to her own praises, nor does she roll 
out rhymes full of the most agonizing feelings, by 
borrowing the ending words of Byron's verses. She 
is not always scribbling, though it is rumoured she 
keeps a Diary, and regularly inserts the day's events 
before curl-papering. She is a merciful correspon- 
dent, and her letters are not crossed and barred like 
so much crotchet- work. There is no mystery about her 
notes, no thrusting them into her pocket, and rushing 
up into her bed-room (that female sanctuary), to read 
them. It is most libellous to hint that she rehearses 
the bride's part of the marriage ceremony, and it is . 
equally ill-natured to report that she spends hours 
before a looking-glass, twisting, plaiting, braiding, and 
curling her hair in order to find out the most 
becoming style of hair-dress. No one else but 



THE MODEL YOUNG LADY. 7Y 

tke very oldest old maid would think of insinuat- 
ing that she resorts to sour cream to remove sun- 
bum ; or ever calls in the aid o e butter-milk to dis 
perse a crowd of freckles; or imbibes treacle and brim- 
stone to get a complexion of strawberries and cream ; 
or sleeps in moist gloves to pick up white hands; or 
has a breathless ambition to procure a good figure, 
absurdly thinking that the saving clause of every young 
lady is a small waist, *ust as if the great architect of 
Woman had been Tite. Neither does she take wine- 
glasses of vinegar in her Byronic fear of getting fat. Her 
horror of age is very mild — she is not always wondering 
" What she shall be like at thirty !" or " how folks can 
crawl on at forty !" Her dresses are not sent back fifty 
times to be altered, nor is her milliner scolded for not 
making her figure look like the French prints. 

The servants love and respect the Model Young 
Lady, for the natural reason that she is kind and con- 
siderate to them. She never keeps her maid up clH 
night, and then wonder the next day " what can make 
her so sleepy and stupid ?" She does not understand the 
language of flowers, or make a practice of giving away 
hei jouquets at parties. She never rouges, excepting 
at a compliment. She has as little taste for flattery as 
champagne or German waltzing; " it makes her giddy." 
She would rather not "polka" with a ''fast" young 
gentleman after supper. She never makes innuendo 
appointments by asking "if you shall be at the Cale- 
donian ball?" or by expatiating on the enjoyment of 
1 her walk every day at twelve o'clock in the Regent's 
Park. ' ' She can sit out a tragedy without flirting, and 



78 THE MODEL YOUNG LADY 

listen to Jenny Lind without talking incessantly through 
every bar. She is not always giggling, and is as quick 
as a ballet heroine at her toilet. She receives parental 
advice with the sweetest humility, and maybe reproved 
without bursting into a passionate flood of tears. A 
serious conversation does not "bore her to death," 
nor does she shoot down Common Sense by that tre- 
mendous canon of female criticism — " Bother!" 

She is not blinded with a starry Knight, or dazzled 
by a more luminous title, or foolishly caught by a pair 
of " golden fly-catchers" on the shoulders of a beauti- 
fully-padded officer. Her taste for beauty is a little 
refined. A pair of moustaches do not instantly curl 
themselves round her sensitive heart, nor a tight-fitting 
coat immediately embraced by her as an oppor- 
tunity too good to be lost. She knows that fashion- 
able men, like auction-room furniture, are only 
made up and highly French polished to pass off for a 
superior article. She does not pity "those poor 
creatures who cannot boast of a grandfather," nor 
measure her behaviour to persons by their standing in 
society. A tradesman does not horrify her, nor does 
she think it a degradation to return the kind inquiries 
of an inferior with thanks or some show of gratitude. 

She can work also, and run about the house to 
make herself useful as well as ornamental. She does 
not lie on the sofa all day, reading novels, and imagine 
herself the heroine of every romance, or long to be an 
heiress, or a lovely persecuted orphan. She draws 
and paints a little, talks French a little, but only in 
its proper place ; reads poetry a little, but does not go 



THE MODEL YOUNG LADY. 1% 

through Moore purposely for quotations. Her accom 
plishments are as numerous as her admirers. She 
has a gift of everything ; she can read music and men 
at sight, hut plays only upon the former. She goes 
to the piano at once, when asked " to ohlige the com- 
pany," without having a "dreadful cold." She is 
anything hut romantic, and never makes a " little 
stupid " of herself hy wishing to die of consumption. 

Her knowledge of the world, it must be confessed, 
is very limited. She believes freely what is told her, 
when it is not relating to herself, and has no idea of 
imposition, or duplicity, or coquetry, or artfulness, 
or nii-ting. She imagines she could get her living 
any day, and that fortunes are made as easily 
as pies and puddings. She has not the slightest 
notion that money is requisite for marriage, and lives 
in a happy blissful ignorance of how butchers and 
milliners' bills are paid. This knowledge, how- 
ever, is acquired in the school-rooms, not the drawing- 
rooms, of life, so it must not be wondered at if the 
Model Young Lady is no scholar in those hard lessons 
of experience, which, once learnt, are not soon for- 
gotten. She is as happy as the day — or the night — is 
long. She is very enthusiastic, very affectionate, and 
very much beloved by every one, even by her own sex, 
for she is generous to them all, and envious of none ; 
she never quizzes, or is puzzled to know " whatever 
the men can see in that insipid Miss Jones !" Mammas 
quote her as a pattern to aspirants still in their teens, 
brothers cite her irresistible graces, and sisters give the 
fimsrung touch to her reputation bythe detracting praise 



80 



THE MODEL YOUXQ LADY. 



of envious rivalship. She is a favourite with everybody, 
and if she would only send her name and address to the 
author of this little book, and allow him to present them 
as a free gift to every young man.who purchases a copy 
of these Model Women ,* his fortune is made ! What 
bachelor, pray, would weigh a shilling, when he was 
buying a trifle from Paradise — a foretaste of Heaven — 
that Society's Miss, but Nature's great Hit — a Model 
Young Lady. 




* Mr. Bogue has most gallantly allowed' a beautiful letter-box, 
made of orange-wood, and suspended by two doves tied togetln r 
by silver string, to be hung outside his office to receive communi 
rations to the above effect. All tenders to be addressed to the 
author, and marked " Private and Confidential." BeyonJ 
the above stipulation, the strictest secresy moy be relied upon. 



THE MODEL MAID-OFALL-WORK. 



f HI E E age is fourteen. Her arms 
are bare, and her feet slip- 
shod. Her curls are rarely 
out of paper. She sports a 
clean apron on the Sunday, 
abcftit tea-time. It is 'a 
mystery where she sleeps; 
some say the kitchen, in 
one of the large drawers ; 
and others declare she has 
a turn-up bed in the hall- 
clock ; but it is not known 
for positive whether she 
ever goes to bed at alL 
She has a wonderful affec- 
tion for the cat. Every- 
thing that is missed, or 
lost, or broken, or not eaten, 
she gives unhesitatingly to 
him. She is not fond of 
the drawing-room, but has a good-natured partiality 
for the garret, who sings funny songs, and gives her 
occasionally an order for the play. She takes her 
dinner whilst washing the dishes, and never gets 
her breakfast till all the floors have done with the one 
teapot. She tries very hard to answer five bells at 
once, and in despair answers none. She always forgets 




82 



THi MODEL MAID-OF-ALL WORK 



the mustard, and prefers blowing the fire with her 
mouth instead of the bellows. Her hands will not 
bear minute inspection; and no wonder, for she is 
cleaning boots, or washing, or cooking dinners, all 
day long. She carries coals in a dustpan, hands 
bread on a fork, and wipes plates with her apron. She 
is abused by everybody, and never gets a holiday She 
only knows it is Sunday by the lodgers stopping in 
bed later than usual, and having twice as many din- 
ners to cook. She is never allowed to go out, excepting 
to fetch beer or tobacco. She hears complaints with- 
out a murmur, and listens to jokes without a smile. 
She gets <£6 a-year, and is expected to wait on about 
twenty persons, to do the work of five servants, to 
love all the children in the house, and to be honest 
for the money. It is not known what becomes of the 
Model Maid-of-all-Work in her old age. It is believed, 
however, that she sinks into the charwoman at the age 
of twenty. Landladies, be gentle to her ! 




^^^Mi^^^^f^l: 



THE MODEL MILLINER. 




IKE a fashionable phy- 
sician, she lives upon the 
weakness of the fair sex — 
only what physician has 
so many complaints to 
attend to, or such delicate 
wounds to cure as those of 
female vanity? Besides, 
is there a physician, how- 
ever Pure, that would dress 
the wounds of his patients 
in the same handsome way 
that she dresses her s ? She 
has a pharmacopoeia of 
remedies at her fingers' 
ends. She can tell what 
ails a lady merely by look 
ing at her. If you have 
no colour, she knows the 
precise warm tint that will 
brighten up your com- 
plexion ; or, if you have 
too much, she can tell 
to a shade what will 
make you look as pale 
as a widow at her third 



84 THE MODEL MILLINER. 

wedding. She can pad down a circular baci?, lowei 
a high pair of shoulders with one touch of the scis- 
sors, take the fine edge off a hatchet face by a pair of 
rosy "whiskers;" will fatten your cheeks with a 
flowery border, and, by the talisman of her magic 
needle, almost change a figure like a sack into the 
fashionable tournure of the hour-glass ; in fact, will 
decorate away any deformity, or cut out any ugly im 
possibility, you choose to order. More than this, she 
plucks from the head of old age several long years, and 
many a dowager, who has passed her door " on the 
wrong side of forty " (if such a number ever enters 
the head of a lady) has left it with the happy con- 
viction that she was a blushing debutante, considerably 
under twenty. Her shop is the celebrated fairy mill, 
in which by some charm — at present only possessed by 
looking-glasses — the old are ground young again. 

You can almost tell the Model Milliner by her ap- 
pearance. She is a cheap lay-figure of the " Modes 
de Paris." She is smart, neat, fashionable, and 
elegant, yet anything but obtrusive in her dress. 
She courts the shade with dark colours, as if she kept 
herself as a standing background to throw out the 
bright hues of her customers. Her own stock of 
bonnets is innumerable. She never wears the same 
twice. Like a French surgeon, she first tries experi 
ments upon her own person before she practises on her 
patients. However, it is most mean to insinuate, 
that she sells her bonnets afterwards as new, when 
refreshed by new ribbons. She is always smiling, 
always obliging, never contradicting. The only in 



THE MODEL MILLINER. 85 

strument she uses is flattery. With this she removes, 
as with a plane, the roughest difficulties. " You really 
look so charming in that bonnet — it is so very distingue, 
so aristocratic; it is just your style— it would quite 
distress her to see it worn by anybody else, and is so 
cheap ; she makes nothing by it, the materials are so 
expensive, the price so very low, and you look so 
handsome in it," &c. &c, and thus she makes a long 
purse by constantly so-so-mg. 

The honesty of the Model Milliner is above all sus- 
picion. To believe her, poor thing, she loses by every 
article she makes. With a quicksilvery rapidity of the 
tongue, which makes it very difficult for anyone to 
" take her up," she runs over the separate articles that 
compose the aerial turban you are admiring, gives you 
the price to a feather of every little item about it, and 
leaves you in a state of wonderment how she can live 
and pay for the handsome looking-glasses about the 
room, when she does business at such a ruinous rate. 
With her the word "perquisites" is like the word 
" impossible " with Napoleon — it has emigrated long 
ago from the dictionary. She always finds a " lady's 
own materials " quite sufficient. She is above sending 
home one flounce less than the number ordered, and 
would not on any inducement — not even to have the 
royal arms over her door — appropriate satin enough 
for an apron, or keep back an inch of your charming 
Brussells' point. Her power of physiognomy is quite 
Lavateresque. She has always something made ex 
pressly for each customer, something composed espe- 
cially for the style of everybody. Her patience, too, 



86 THE MODEL MILLINER 

surpasses a Sister of Charity. You may try on all her 
fragile stock, drape all her mantillas, scarfs, and visitee y 
in all possible fancies over your shoulders ; pull 
and toss about all her rainbow assortment of cobweb 
caps and bird-cage bonnets, and this she will allow you 
to do for hours — never murmuring, but smiling as 
gratefully as before. She answers more absurd ques- 
tions in a day than a Prime Minister in a week, and 
is as indulgent to the conceited beauty of sixteen as to 
the vain coquette of sixty. She is naturally mild and 




FAS DE FA8CINATION. 

coaxing, but allows no frail daughter of Eve, tempted, 
beyond the strength of her sex, by a too-seductive 
bonnet, to run up a bill; nor induces a young lady to 
anticipate her next year's allowance by the persuasion 
of a long credit ; nor allures a simple Miss, just fresh 
from school, to buy things she does not want, 
by the dangerous promise that "she will never 
trouble her for the amount." She never speculates, 
and has never been known to supply goods upon the 
chance of " a certain event coming off;" or to post- 



THE MODEL MILLINER. 87 

pone the payment of an account till " certain expecta- 
tions are realized ; " or to urge, with legal firmness, 
that Mr. M. cannot possibly refuse to pay for such 
absolute " necessities;" or to equip young daughters 
previous to their marriages, upon the base under 
standing that she is to be paid afterwards She pays 
no more deference to the Duchess than to the plain 
Mrs.; all women are the same in her eyes, all 
equal candidates for finery. Her foreign orders are 
never executed with her old stock of rejected goods. 
She would blush, also, if she caught herself imposing 
on country cousins last year's fashions for the newest 
inventions. She employs a long-bearded courier, who, 
like an English manager, is constantly running back- 
wards and forwards from London to Paris in search of 
the latest novelties. She keeps two distinct sets of 
apprentices and girls — the one, intensely Frenchified, 
for foreign patronesses — the other, strictly English, for 
patriotic customers. In similar complaisance to little 
prejudices her goods change from Spitalfields to Lyons' 
manufactories, according to the purchaser's nationality 
There is a profound mystery around the domestic 
ties of the Model Milliner. Her children are never 
mentioned — her husband is never seen or heard. 
Occasionally a rakish gentleman, in moustachios, 
glides into the show-room, but he is sternly frowned 
down, and, after a sharp whisper, goes out as mysteri- 
ously as he came in. Can that be her husband? 
Scarcely — there is so little affection apparent be 
tween the two; the man obeys more like a servant 
than a human lord and master, to whom all the 



88 THE MODEL MILLINER 

caps and crinolines in the establishment belong! 
But no matter— the avocations of the Model Milliner 
allow her no time to be troubled with such small 
considerations, though she delights, as becomes a 
woman and a milliner, in every turn of the exciting, 
game of Matrimony, and lays awake at night twisting 
over in bed her numerous wedding orders. 

The Model Milliner is most correct. No young 
men are allowed to lounge about in her show-room— 
none but married gentlemen have the entree ef her 
work-room. She is never seen at places of public 
amusement by herself; nor was she ever accused by 
the most suspicious mother of allowing her house to 
screen sentimental assignations, or of making it a 
young ladies' post>office for letters with love-sick seals. 
She is never seen at public balls — on the contrary, 
she is always at home, promoting the comforts of thr 
young ladies "who are improving themselves under 
her tuition." 

To these the Model Milliner devotes her most 
affectionate thoughts. They are really her children, 
and she acts to them like a mother. She will not 
allow them to work more than ten hours a-day. She 
spares their health, looks after their morals as rigidly 
as their tasks, does not stint their meals, gives 
them what little amusement she can " after hours," 
and will not allow any working all night, not even to 
finish the ball-dress of the handsomest beauty that 
ever made the Guards go mad at Almacks, or to com- 
plete the trousseau of the prettiest bride that was ever 
given away by the Duke of Wellington, at St. George's 

trof-^ - 



THE MODEL MILLINER. 89 

A prettier pictuie cannot be imagined than the Model 
Milliner surrounded by her young pupils, all intent 
upon the architecture of some " love of a bonnet,' ' that 
is to cap all other bonnets* and to be received by the 
heads of fashion as the prize bonnet of the season. 

As the Model Milliner rises in the world, a con- 
fusion of tongues, like the Tower of Babel, attends her 
growing eminence. Her knowledge of English be- 
comes more French every day, until at last her dialect, 
like the British Channel, belongs to neither England 
nor France, but is continually running between the 
two. She talks like Madame Celeste, which makes it 
very difficult to understand her, unless you have had 
a course of six private boxes at the Adelphi. A simi- 
lar metamorphosis takes place in her name and door- 
plate. Mrs. Todd is changed to Madame Toddee, 
and her shop is called a " Magazin de Nouveautes, 
or, at least, a "Depot," and circulars inform the 
curious that Madame Toddee is de Paris (of course), 
and was the "premiere Sieve of Madame Victorine, and 
carried off the gold medal at the last 'Exposition (Tin* 
dustrie 7 for her very superior 'jupons hygieniques.' *' 
As her fame increases, so does her invisibility. Her 
"Magazin 17 is vacated for a handsome mansion in some 
ci-devant aristocratic square, where liveried footmen 
usher you up velvet-carpeted stairs into saloons andbou 
doirs with gold-legged chairs and the rosiest ottomans. 
She only receives the elite. She " gives consultations" — 
is very difficult, however, to consult ; and when visited 
in her incognito, sends down word that " Madame 
cannot be disturbed—she is composing. 77 She 6tyle# 



90 



THE MODET MILLINEK. 



herceii an "artiste," has her carriage and opera-box, 
is more invisible every day, until she ascends so high 
at last, that, like a balloon, she cannot be seen at all. 
The truth is, she builds a handsome fortune out of 
bonnets, retires to Italy, buys a villa on the borders of 
seme lake, marries a good-looking primo-tenore from 
one of the Operas, purchases a title, and is often 
astonished when she looks back, smd recollects when 
she was plain Miss Todd, who began life in the classic 
regions of Cranbourne Alley, rose to Eegent Street, 
ascended into Hanover Square, soared above Almacks. 
as Madame Todde"e, and now is the Contessa di 
Toddalini, all from having been a Model Milliner 




^ 



A 



NOV 4 1961 



